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JUBILEE ESSAYS; 



A PLEA FOR 



THE UNSELFISH LIEE. 





CROSBY & NICHOLS, 
117 Washington Street, Boston. 

18 6 2. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1832, in the Clerk's Office 
the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 

IN EXCHAi*3£ 
6&SRUN COL. USfc 

MAR 3- 1916 



H. L. BROWN, PRINTER, GROTON JUNCTION. 



INTRODUCTION 



The late gunpowder missionary movements in the United 
States have been so noisy and interesting that, though ready 
to fire this Jubilee Salute eighteen months ago, I resolutely 
spiked my "battery. I now clear the vent and let loose 
these Dogs of War, hoping that Selfishness, the Great Re- 
bellion against God, the curse of the earth, may soon "be 
smashed by Thunder all Bound. Knowing that it will 
take many campaigns and many volunteers, I dare not 
longer delay. To "make sure of one," here I "bolt. 

Spriggs. 

August, twenty sixth, 1862. 



ESSAYS. 



THE CONSTITUTION OF NATURE 1 

COVETOUSNESS 7 

THE RETRIBUTIONS 29 

THE LUXURIOUS LIFE ' - 47 

GOD COMES TO THE RESCUE 83 

COVETOUSNESS IN THE CHURCH 89 

LUXURIOUS LIFE IN THE CHURCH 107 

CHURCH DISCIPLINE 119 

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 145 

DOING BUSINESS FOR GOD - 163 

THE REWARDS 1S5 

THE COMING FIFTY YEARS - ' 201 

THE ARGUMENT 234 

WHAT BAXTER SAYS ABOUT IT - - : 247 




THE CONSTITUTION OF NATURE. 



I hold that theory of the nature of virtue, which deems 
God's desire to make others happy, the spring of creation 
and the essence of holiness. We may expect, then, under 
his government, that selfishness will be counted sin, and 
holiness will he found in an Unselfish Life, — life, the ful- 
filment of function, the active development of a positive 
power, and that to no self-ends. God has written this lesson 
in the very constitution of things. On what plan is the 
world made ? Nothing lives unto itself. The soil makes 
the forest ; and the forest, new soil. The ocean gives rain, 
and the rain fills the ocean. Flowers, receiving from the 
breeze their breath, send forth on it their thank-offering 
of perfume. Not one star in the whole blue vault shines 
unto itself ; but, to beings in other worlds, it glimmers as a 
light on the highway to heaven. Man, learning this law of 
compensation, educates Nature ; and straightway she repays 
him grateful service. Nature, too, claims tribute from man ; 
and as year by year she brings forth her stores for his sus- 
tenance, so, by and by, he contributes his handful to her dust. 
Circulation is the universal law — receiving, then giving; 
and, if the gate of giving be shut, receiving is death. 

Now, this power of giving, of outgoing, is a necessity of 
human nature. Life itself is power to develop. Education 
is the drawing out of innate forces. An idea manifests its 



4 THE CONSTITUTION OF NATURE 

life by its struggles to find an outlet. We are thoroughly 
taught, only as we undertake to teach. 

"For if our virtues 
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 
As if we had them not." 
" Our spirits are not finely touched 
But to fine issues." 

The passion of selfishness in man, instead of showing that 
God meant to have every man care for himself alone, makes 
men more dependent on each other, that they may the more 
feel the need of the unselfish life. Thus, all men feel the 
need of unselfishness in those on whom they are dependent. 

All men stand ready freely to receive ; but few and thin 
are the ranks of those who stand ready as freely to give. 

The constitution of Nature, which indicates that man is 
not to live to himself alone, is violated by selfishness. The 
love of self, in proportion to one's worth compared with 
other souls and with God, is a proper duty, necessary to in- 
dividual well-being ; but excessive self-love, or a dispropor- 
tionate self-gratification, is selfishness, sin. By it, the whole 
moral harmony is at once impaired, the whole face of society 
marred. In the words of Aristotle: "While by goodness 
and kindness, and mutual compassion and helpfulness, men 
can become as gods to one another; by narrowness and self- 
ishness and envy and ill-will, men degenerate into beasts, 
and become wolves and tigers to one another." Nothing is 
needed but complete selfishness to make society a complete 
wreck, like a watch whose crazy cogs admit of no harmonious 



VIOLATED BY SELFISHNESS. 

movement. Stagnation comes by stopping circulation. Run- 
ning counter to the constitution, results in ruin. Giving is 
the law ; but men rebel and a curse comes. The world is 
dark to-day, because every candle is under its own bushel. 
The lewd populations are poor, ignorant, and depraved, fill- 
ing the earth as if it were one valley of wounding, where 
groans rise from every thicket : and, in their despair, they 
cry for help to little pastes of mud, or bits of carved wood ; to 
soulless animals, or dead or living men ; to the sun or stars, 
or unknown spirits. Behold the curse on men's bodies, the 
curse on the intellect, the curse on the moral sense, the 
plungings of a humanity without a God ! 



COVETOUSNESS. 



Selfishness in its two forms, Covetousness and Lux- 
ury — is not peculiar to any age. It has been the mark of 
the race in all ages. The heat and struggle and darkness 
of the passion have been like the hot and gloomy and tem- 
pestuous flood, that enveloped the embryo earth, and choked 
for ages every avenue to life: under this pestilent moral 
atmosphere only the lowest forms of life appear. Yet the 
world is not going backward. It is a mark of ignorance for 
any man to suggest that his own age is peculiarly selfish. 
" This is a day when a man seems scarcely to love his own 
brother," has been repeated in every generation since the 
" golden mouthed " author of the phrase; till, instead of de- 
noting a special age of coveting and luxury, it only suggests 
the perpetuity of the sin. 

An increase of the facilities for gratifying covetousness 
and luxury is no sign of the increase of the spirit of selfish- 
ness. On the other hand, the increased and boundless grati- 
fication of the lust may tend, by the excess, to destroy it. 
The nineteenth century, with its means of accumulating 
and spending, may thus tend to overthrow that spirit of 
selfishness, which is less the mark of this generation than 
of any previous one. 

The prevalence and mischief of selfishness, as manifested in 
a spirit of covetousness or luxury, are more peculiarly 



10 SELFISHNESS PECULIAR TO NO AGE. 

shown among the most savage tribes, than among civilized 
and trading nations. The sharpness of uncultivated men, 
while less persistent, is more a passion than the sherwdness 
of more finely knit characters. Those powers, which have 
never been harnessed into the chariots or drays of civiliza- 
tion, are yet fiercer, fleeter, stronger than the well trained 
forces on 'change. The wild "bears" are more formidable 
than the tame ones. The serpent like African is "wise," 
in his trade of child or cotton for bead or blanket ; and, in 
every bargain, gets what is of more worth to him than what 
he sells. Cunning and keenness are found alike in the un- 
tamed Occidental and Oriental beggars and thieves and mur- 
derers. The conqueror of Mexico, in one scene, sets forth 
universal human nature. Sending to the generous king a 
gilded helmet to be filled with shining dust, he sends with it 
a message saying, that "the Spaniards are troubled with 
a disease of the heart for which gold is a specific remedy." 
This disease, and the seeking of this remedy, have been the 
chief root of human evil. 

In past ages, in the eyes of most of the world's kings, for 
a subject to be rich has been to be guilty of treason. A 
vineyard or jewel, of which to be robbed, has been counted 
a sufficient crime. Or if a king, in his turn, could fill a cham- 
ber with gold, plebeian treachery has drawn blood through 
his royal robe. Chief priests are ever found to hold the 
price of blood; and the choice defenders of justice have 
ever had among them some Felix waiting for a bribe. Hon- 
orable guardians of public funds are often like those old Greek 
heroes, who, as famous architects, built a treasure- vault. 



ROOT OF EVIL. . 11 

and left one stone removable, through which they could come 
secretly, and take away the gold. All the powers of the 
state and of a corrupt church have been used to "coin" by 
persecutions. If a stream of gold, "a yard deep," may be 
made to flow from the scaffold, let the heads drop. 

Those who are familiar with the early life of our Golden 
State may well credit any tales of the infamy of past ages. 
For this same gold, men traverse the wild seas or the wild 
sands ; wreck rail-cars, or murder the shipwrecked. In our 
foremost Commonwealth, instances have not been wanting 
of men's robbing the graves of near relatives, to obtain a 
gold ring or a plate of teeth from the dead. Our newspapers 
reek with the records of crime and the decay of honor, mir- 
acles of meanness all done in the name of that money, to 
which an old divine applied the phrase, "Desire of all na- 
tions." The heels of humanity seem fastened to the chariot of 
Mammon. The great zeal of humanity has ever been for 
each man, in his own place, to seek his own good. 

For illustration of the point that the love of money is 
the root of all evil, take the two crimes in the United States ; 
abating which, the millennium could scarce be kept off, as it 
were one generation. The distiller and rumseller, but for their 
love of gold, would quit that business which now brings 
every twelfth man in the "modern Athens" into connection 
with the trade. Sixty four millions of bushels of grain fed the 
British distilleries, in the year of the great Irish famine : 
covetousness snatched bread from the hand of the dying. 
The tame temperance men would destroy such soul destroying 
traffic but for their love of gold. It is cheaper to pay for 




12 TWIN DEMONS. 

making laws than to pay for using them. Time, energy, and 
expense are ever removing the evils rising from Intemperance, 
but are not brought to pluck up the root of those evils. 

The other curse of our country, Slavery, had its secret 
strength in the fact that the four million slaves were worth, at 
an average, five hundred dollars each. This item, of two thou- 
sand million dollars worth of bodies and souls, confirms the say- 
ing of Chrysostom, penned sixteen centuries ago, that "Sla- 
very is the fruit of covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable 
greediness." The slave trade, not long since, awoke to 
more vigor than for half a century ; not because of the ' ' re- 
vivals" and the increased missionary spirit, though that be 
the flag they sail under ; but because the slave coast is also 
the gold coast. This motive stimulated the principals; 
and the reason it was not put down was like unto it, namely, 
the calculations of cotton, the countings of covetousness, too 
much busied the brains of our philanthropy. When Trade 
Tiad anything to sell, Slavery was safe. In more recent 
times, Old Mother England forgot her good sense, only be- 
cause she feared she should have nothing to spin. 

Count up as you will the evils of earth, the snares of avarice 
are everywhere laid under more shallow sins. A careful anal- 
ysis of the catalogue of crime, and the motives leading to sin, 
shows that it is difficult to find any sin which has not its 
tap root in covetousness, in the love of the means of self 
gratification, or in luxury, — the actual expensive gratify- 
ing of self. Better if the rivers of gold and of jewels had 
been forever guarded by that infernal dragon, fabled by an- 
cient Peruvians to dwell on their Emerald Eiver. 



EDUCATION. 13 



The evil, arising from a covetous spirit is shown in the 
frequent ruin of individual character. The very touch of 
gold seems to enliven human hearts as with the electricity 
of the lower world. Infants feel it. There is a grievous 
fault in the teaching of those parents, whose chief precept is, 
" Save money! save money !" One of the meanest men that 
has lately walked the earth said, "Why do you wonder? My 
father never praised me for anything but for saving half a 
penny." It is a lesson the ancestral Adversary will soon 
enough teach a child, and needs not severe parental enforc- 
ing. 

Tracing out the evil education of a money catcher, we 
wonder not at his evil life. Let no man say the picture is 
overdrawn ; for, though it be not made to the measure of 
any single man, it yet characterizes the tendency of the 
coveting spirit. 

Three letters of the alphabet, " Dr." and " Cr," lay at the 
foundation of his learning. He is instructed into a strange 
idea of religion. He studies the proverb, that "money 
is a defense, and answereth all things." He reads the 
Bible commendations of simplicity in dress, ornament, and 
food ; and the praise of toil. It is written : — 

He that loveth pleasure shall be poor. 

He that is slothful is a brother to the waster. 

He that sleepeth in harvest is a son of shame. 

The idle soul shall suffer hunger. 

The thoughts of the diligent tend to plenty. 

The soul of the diligent shall be made fat. 



14 BIBLE AND CATECHISM. 

The substance of the diligent is precious. 
Seest thou a man diligent in business ? 
He shall stand before kings ; he shall bear rule. 
This promising student in our holy religion delights in 
that work of the Creator, which "weighed" the dust, and 
"measured" the water, in making up a world. He finds 
the secret of God's wealth lying deeper than God's bounty. 
in the fact of God's frugality. The unselfish ravens, which 
fed a prophet, only teach him that, when some storm of 
importunity drives him to act against nature, by giving to 
the needy, he may, raven like, steal the food he gives for 
charity. Gathering every penny, he delights in that Christ 
who gathered up fragments ; yet will he render every penny 
to the Caesar within him. Not slothful, he studies to do 
his own business, working with his own hands. He reads 
Dr. South' s notes on Paul; and will straightway become all 
things to all men, that he may by all means gain something. 
Again, in the Doctor's rendering of the Apocalypse, he finds 
coveting to be the Alpha and Omega of a Satanic Alphabet, 
indicating the reaching hand of childhood and the last grasp- 
ing of age. Eemembering only one prayer, that for daily 
bread, he feigns his name to be Benjamin, the man of five 
portions. He is taught a new Catechism ; and, to the first 
question, answers — varying the words of Carlyle, — "The 
soul of a man was appointed for spinning cotton and making 
money ; or merely shooting grouse and gathering rent. To 
him, eternity and immortality, and all human nobleness and 
divine facts, that do not tell upon the stock exchange, are 
meaningless fables, empty as the inarticulate wind." Thus 



THE PREACHER. 15 

taught at home, the hoy goes to church, to hear, perchance, 
of the uses of wealth, — how it creates a beauty of fine houses, 
parks, libraries, feasting the eye of the poor as of the rich ; 
all which things serve as cheap toys to remind us of the 
greater things that await our manhood with God : but the 
only definite impression left on the lad's mind is, at least, 
to have the golden toy. Or he hears a highly wrought figure, 
to the effect, that a money chest — being, as it were, close 
packed with the ships, the buildings, the lands, it can any 
day procure — may be used as an image of the wealth stowed 
away in God's Book of Promissory Notes ; and here again 
the only definite impression left is, at the least, to make 
sure of the chest which is so honorable an imagery of better 
possessions: or, if it be learnedly hinted that as trade adds 
to every man's private premises by bringing him the fruits 
of the world, so the magnetism of gold may add to a man's 
own family, his unknown, dying brothers in India; the 
chief impression left is, — that a man make sure of the typi- 
cal Trade ; and then become a church, a state, a world to 
himself, with heathenish appetites enough to absorb all his 
charities. 

Thus elaborately educated in a strange religion, as the 
base of his character, the boy begins his stranger schooling, 
under the same teacher, his One Idea. A favorite Physiol- 
ogy soon teaches him, that the muscles which close the hand 
are more powerful th an those which open it. His Mathe- 
matics suggest, that addition and multiplication are the only 
rules applicable to his interests ; and division and subtrac- 
tion are suitable only in his dealings with others. His 






16 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

Philosophy teaches him much about the instinct of self pres- 
ervation; from which he deduces the necessity of ''laying 
up against a time of need." His Logic, lame in each step, 
is, "Covetousness brings riches; riches bring happiness : there- 
fore be covetous. The desire for money thus becomes rooted 
in the judgment : it is no longer a sudden cry as of a passion, 
which is heard only now and then ; but it becomes a per- 
petual whispering as of a small Satan ever squat by his ear. 
Here is a leaf from his Political Economy : — 
Those who complain of the amassing of wealth as taking 
bread from the poor, forget that the poor are often the vicious 
and lazy : and while it is true that four hours work per day on 
the part of every man would cover the back and support the 
stomach of the race, and leave the rest of the time to 
the brain and heart; it is sad to see that the indolent 
and vile are found not only among the sons of the rich, 
but that the great census is among the poor. The masses 
sadly work one day in the week, and are gladly idle six 
days. It becomes, then, a relief and a matter of praise, that 
■" the hand of the diligent maketh rich," and affords labor to 
the poor; thus equalizing the wealth. It is a question 
whether the greatest use of the pyramids may not have 
been in the fact, that the building of a single one of them 
furnished employment to a third of a million of men. It is 
certainly better that wealth employ men in piling up stones, 
than in throwing them at each other, as in the ancient wars. 
It is an advance in human nobleness, that the sword is now 
so largely displaced by silver, and that expensive houses are 
built more than cheap tombs. Wealth is not to be despised ; 



I 



HISTORY. 1 7 

its bad use only is to be condemned. "Wealth is a great 
power : its good use is to be sought. If wealth were in it- 
self a bad thing, we think a beneficent Providence would 
never have given such facilities for gaining it, — this same 
Providence forbidding war, murder, thieving, and the habits 
which diminish wealth : therefore we may seek it, get it, and 
use it as we will ! 

Here, too, is a specimen from the historic reading: — 
To the American, money is good, and he has a right to get 
it ; for the first search for America was stimulated by nothing 
so much as by a hope of finding the wealth of the Indies. 
After the first landing of the men, the first thing learned 
was of Cuba, the Isle of Gold. The first search of Mexico 
and Peru was for gold. The Spanish power in America 
was by obtaining a golden key. In Virginia the settlers 
sought yellow dust. Baffin's Bay was explored for gold. 
The wanderings of De Soto, in the western wilderness, were 
impelled by the same passion. The great war of our Inde- 
pendence was nominally to save a tax of a few pence on tea, 
and to avoid the greater greed of mother England. The 
great national question of our politics was on the United 
States Bank. The statesman whom we kept longest in the 
Senate was called "Old Bullion." Our Pacific Empire 
awoke because of gold. Central plains and mountains rose 
to note because of gold. The American, then, is the natural 
born child of Mammon. What though God uses this lust 
for gold to open up new countries, till the wilderness blos- 
som as the rose? AVhat though this careful spading of 
every inch of soil for gold is only to make the soil fruitful 

2* 



1 8 GRADUATION. 

for God's husbandry? The rough state of the country, 
while the first labors are going on, should not lead us to 
despair of a beauteous garden of God's plotting and sowing. 
His golden growths will be better than our dull ore. Yet 
this preliminary state is not without its advantages ; and 
the grand advantage is, that we live in the time of the ac- 
tual gold digging, — an advantage we are swift to take ! 

This model education in the Bible and practical religion, 
and in Philosophy, Economy, and History, is finished by a 
smattering of Polite Literature. He dotes on the story of the 
sharp infant Hermes, and of keen Prometheus dividing the 
sacrifices with Zeus. In a choice story book he reads of a 
barber's basin, that seemed like ;a golden shield ; and he 
learns the speech of a shrewd squire: — "Now-a-days, mas- 
ter, people are more inclined to feel the pulse of Have than of 
Know: an ass with golden furniture makes a better figure 
than a horse with a pack saddle." 

His graduating speech, stolen and altered from a worthy 
western orator, reads thus: " The divine effluence, which is 
shed from Corinthian column and blossoming tree, from 
emerald lawn and blushing fruit ; the matin song of birds 
among the leaves ; the fragrant breath of summer flowers ; 
the essence of Nature, her beauty and her glory, — are of no 
account, because they cannot be sold by ' samples ' in the 
exchange on short credit ; or, what would be a better ' opera- 
tion,' 'realized' at once. The most beautiful landscape 
in the world is a corner city lot ; the most graceful tree, that 
which will make the biggest pile of cordwood; the most 
accomplished lady, she who is heir apparent to the largest 



BEGINS LIFE. 19 

fortune. The sun shines to save the expense of gas and 
coal oil: the 'books, that are hooks,' are the Ledger and 
Bank Book ; and the eloquence which stirs like the sound 
of a trumpet is that, which offers two per cent a month with 
good securities." 



He then sets out for business. He has been taught 
that a man is "doing well," without regard to character, 
when he is gaining money. He is put on the study of Poor 
Bichard's Almanac as if its teachings were for hoarding as 
well as saving, and as if all its decent, prudent maxims 
might make a man a finished miser. The boy's book of bus- 
iness proverbs is filled in thus : — 

To some men it is indispensable to be worth money ; for 
without it, they would be worth nothing. 

A man may be too honest to live. 

Plain dealing is a jewel ; but he that wears it shall die 
a beggar. 

As he goes forth for fortune, the first night on his hard 
pillow, he dreams of a ladder from earth to heaven, — one 
cent, two cents, three cents, five cents, ten, quarter, half, 
dollar, fives, tens, double tens ; and the princes of earth as- 
cending and descending. He wakes, and his life is to make 
him such a stairway. His life thenceforward is : — 

"Tare and tret, 
Box and net ; 
Box and hogshead, dry and wet ; 



20 THE WILL TO BE RICH. 

Keady made, 

Of every grade ; 
Wholesale, retail, will you trade ? 

Goods for sale : 

Koll or bale, 
Ell or quarter, yard or nail ; 

Every dye : 

Will you buy ? 
None can sell so cheap as I. 

Thus each day 

Wears away, 
And his hair is turning gray ; 

O'er his hooks 

He nightly looks, 
Counts his gain and bolts his locks : 

By and by, 

He will die ; 
But the ledger book, on high, 

Shall unfold 

How he sold, 
How he got and used his gold." 

Thus educated and established, a man can at first have 
only the will to be rich ; that love of money which is the 
root of all evil. Covetousness lies in a mental state, and. 
having only one talent, will hoard it as if it were ten. It 
is an easy step : men love what money will get, then the 
money itself. The insinuation is smooth as a serpent, and 



THE NOISELESS GROWTH. 21 

noiseless as a vampire. A man works hard, keeps an eye 
on his pennies, and stands by his right : this is no sign of 
coveting, yet the sin may he hid in it. A man may appear 
wealthy, and not appear to give liberally ; yet in this exhibit 
no certain sign of coveting : for his wealth may not be his 
own, or he may delight in secret charity ; yet this same 
habit may be the cloak of coveting. Again, a man may de- 
claim against covetousness ; and his own heart, unconscious 
of guilt, may go to sleep under the sermon : yet the same 
declamation may be the cry of a covetous man trying to di- 
vert attention from himself: while he shouts, "Harpy!" 
his own foul feet are on the feast. Anxiety for the seen, 
and forgetfulness of the unseen ; faith in self, and distrust of 
God ; a crowding of the chief converse into the channels of 
cash; the building of larger barns, while God's house is too 
small ; a tendency to quarrel over bargains ; an impatience 
at losses, may make up the small signs of an atmosphere 
of covetousness: all which are consistent with a very 
small estate. Every great desire is at first feeble; the 
Titans are born infants ; flames begin as sparks. A man 
at first poor, at last may perish in this Golgotha of coveting ; 
while, in the excitement of large or petty gain or loss, he 
dreams himself free from grasping. 

The soul may be soon tarnished. "No man doth 
dissemble, lie, oppress, defraud, for love of poverty ; but 
thousands do it for love of riches." If poverty can lead 
to crime, what crime may rise in that heart which perpet- 
ually deems itself poor ! The Bible urges against coveting, 
and its kindred sins, — and what sin is not kindred to it? — 



22 INTENSE GROWTH. 

more than against all others put together ; this, because of 
the tendency to sin found in the feeblest desires for wealth. 

They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, 
and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men 
in destruction and perdition. 

He who makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent. 

It is written in the Ecclesiasticus, that a merchant shall 
hardly keep himself from doing wrong, and a huckster shall 
not be free from sin. 

As a nail sticketh fast between the joining of stones, so 
doth sin stick close between buying and selling. 

As, in the Holy War, men, who will go marketing, will 
make peace with Diabolus. As the Lord knoweth them that 
are his, Satan knoweth them that are his, and keeps them 
in snares. Evil angels are appointed to watch over that 
man who will worship at the first sight of the glittering 
pomp of infernal possessions. Thenceforth there is no faith- 
fulness in his mouth. Trick, strategem, device, are the 
watchwords. Chapters on cheating and the morals of trade 
exhibit the style of petty stealing, of which Adam was guilty, 
and which, like his, prove only the first of a series of sins. 
The little devourers are fierce, swarming as the myriad feet 
of the " driving ants " in Africa, which cannot spare any 
life they can run on. As the man builds up his fortune, it 
seems like a rocky island cut off from the continent of hu- 
manity. His riches then fly abroad, gather in, and feather 
their own nest ; then are ready to scream through the air. 
and steal poor men's children. It becomes the steady busi- 
ness " to crush under feet all the prisoners of the earth." 



FIERCENESS. 23 

The tyrant Ninirod, giant hunter of men, and even the 
King of St. Helena, have now quit the field, and gone into 
the market. Fierceness in bone and "blood is now Shylock 
shrewdness in bill and bond : not a life shall be spared, 
unless it is so expressed in that bond. 

The wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and hath enlarged 
his desire as hell ; and is as death, and cannot be satisfied. 

They all lie in wait for blood ; they hunt every man his 
brother with a net. 

The best of them is as a brier ; the most upright is sharper 
than a thorn hedge. 

The poor useth entreaties; but the rich answereth roughly. 

Instead of relieving the poor, he is always increasing the 
number of the poor ; as if God would bring souls into the 
world, pour his bounty on them, only that a man may decree 
over against God, that those shall beg whom God would bless. 
A prophet describes them as studying up mischief in the 
morning, and fabricating evil upon their beds. 

1 ' In the light they effect it, 
Because it is in the power of their hand ; 
They covet fields, and take them by force, 
And houses, and take them away : 
They oppress a man and his house. 
" They covet greedily all the day long." 

The coveting spreads, deepens till the whole man is under 
it: he beats his brain for new plots, busily plods, stretches 
his sinews, sweats, struggles under this endeavor, as the 



21 A ROBBER. 

drift of the life. Covetousness summons every power of the 
mind : the squadrons all march, and fight for it. The man 
brings to bear the whole law ; seeks gold with all the heart, 
mind, might and strength, and his neighbor's gold more than 
his neighbor. Yet the lumbering wheels of his wealth never 
overtake the driving wheels of his desire. Body and soul 
of servants and of children, if they will not be locked in the 
arms of his golden Moloch, are ground beneath the wheels. 
In the effort to wipe up all the money in any community, 
meanness exhausts the best figures of mythology ; the Bria- 
reus hands are one half for grasping, one half for holding ; 
Proteus shifts his shape rather than yield his treasure ; Hy- 
dra has new heads for every blow aimed at him. 

Thus, those hasting to be rich count their wealth as the 
sea his treasure; — the gold and diamonds all mingled with 
wrecks and bones : made rich only by the power of creating 
a storm, which kills the rightful owners. Or, if we say 
these men are as mountains, which have gathered their 
strength and brilliancy by battling with those elements, 
which the feeble fear ; yet somehow their shadows are cold, 
and it seems as though they were lifted to that height, only 
to hurl avalanches on the poor men who dare linger by 
their sides. 



This lover of gold and hater of man, at last, induces the 
miser's name as well as practice. The countenance is cut in 
coppery lines, stiff as the head of Liberty on our cheapest 



A FOOL. 25 

coin: the manly face on the coin indicates to him, that 
man is to run on penny errands. He uses all the ma- 
chinery of God for this ; or, at last, losing faith, he knows 
no God, no man ; he knows silver, and holds it so close to 
his eye as to shut out all other sight. The daily cash brings 
daily darkness. His gold eagles fill the heavens, hide God's 
sun, and blot out all holy stars. He cares more for the 
acres of earth than for the continents of heaven ; more for the 
houses and barns of earth than for the temples of heaven. He 
becomes thoughtless of God, as the swine of the forest, which 
never lift an eye to the branches that feed them. Gold is 
his hope, fine gold his confidence. The cry is, "Who is the 
Lord, that I should serve him?" then the cry is, "Crucify 
him." Such desire no sharp sighted God over their heads : 
if, therefore, they cannot see the eye flash, they say, "Gcd is 
blind or asleep." 

As a dream, when one awaketh ; so Lord ! when thou 
awakest, thou shalt despise their image. 

Yet the deicide is a fool. The churlish, stingy Nabal is 
well named. His way is his folly. He is wise to do evil ; 
but to do good has no understanding. He is a fool, not only 
in his barn building, but "a fool at large." Of all his houses 
to let, the roof of his brain shelters Inanity : naked as the 
sea or desert, his mind is a lonely waste, fit only to swallow 
caravans and merchantmen. Does this ' ' heir of all the ages" 
stand as the sign of an idiotic generation, cheated, plunder- 
ed dreamers, mistaking straw for gold ? The fool kills the 
life of his gold by shutting it up. He would deem it the 
highest blessing, if he knew he never would use one cent of 



26 DYING OF THE DISEASE. 

what he now has. He will have the sun beams count it no 
more than if it were in a mine or sinking in a wreck. 

There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing. 

His whole character becomes bloated and ready for death ; 
as if he had absorbed all light, all air, all food. His spirit- 
ual sense seems low as the instinct of the animalcule ; the 
soul cleaves to the " dust:" an impression on that soul must 
be by dust. The world, then, sees the extreme power of cov- 
etousness. Literal stories abound strange as that of the 
rich Daniel Dancer, who would beg snuff, pinch by pinch, of 
his friends; then exchange it for a farthing candle, which was 
made to last till the box was filled again : who would lie 
abed to save fire, and, to save towels, would wash only when 
the sun shone. Yet such personages are soon overpowered 
by their disease ; as the ancient miser, who in a famine died . 
of hunger after first selling a mouse for ten pounds. The 
man whose passion fills a large chest and stout cask with 
gold and silver; who keeps no bank notes; invests in no 
public funds ; takes no mortgage ; credits not one dollar to 
any man ; who barters for his clothes, and everything he 
needs ; lays out not one cent for educating his children ; 
runs a distillery and a grog tavern, — when, at last, he loses 
a few dollars on a bargain at cloverseed, he straightway 
goes and hangs himself; fulfilling the old Greek notion, 
that silver is the life of some pitable mortals : cut off the 
vital current, and they die. The longer they have walked 
with their gods, the more deadly is the grief, that comes at 
their loss. 



SUMMING UP. 27 



You may now gather up this argument. We "belong not 
so much to an age, as to a race loving money and for it 
ready to commit all crimes. This is the earliest thought 
of most men, — to get rich : to this they are educated. There 
is in this spirit a tendency to get up a large train of small 
sins to bring in wealth. Then comes violent oppression ; 
then comes the miser's passion, and the complete wreck of 
manliness. Coveting is a root of evil. With such mis- 
chief rising from selfishness, who will turn and seek the 
Unselfish Life? 



THE RETRIBUTIONS. 



3- 



The mischief that rises from the selfish life is an argu- 
ment for the Unselfish Life. We then follow out the life 
of the covetous, and learn of vanity, vexation, and doom. 
It is God's decree, that he who loveth silver shall not he 
satisfied with silver. 

That quiet soul, who sings of content freely as a morn- 
ing bird, may in his prayer remember the sorrows of the 
grasping rich, as well as the sorrows of the starving poor. 
The rich may have a heart of poverty shouting within him, 
"Give me more; give, give." The covetous cry within 
drowns alike the voice of all street beggars and the noise 
of the perishing millions. That devouring heart is a con- 
tinual weariness, as it urges the first rule of charity, -'Be- 
gin at home ; and I, ever at your home, am ever needy." 
The covetous man is plagued by his fears of poverty, as 
much and as often as his debtors are by his duns. This 
fear pinches the life itself. If a man steals my food, I am 
in poverty ; but in worse poverty, if my own thievish heart 
daily watch for my bread : so that my bone and blood and 
muscle may bring a daily action for debt against that same 
plotting heart. 

Another plague is public, — that of the martyrdom for 
money ; when a man must be hissed and persecuted, and 
have all manner of evil spoken truly against him, for the 



32 PIERCED WITH PAINS. 

sake of gold. Yet even this plague has its relief in that 
strengthening which ever comes through trial : the coveting 
man learns to delight in the epithet " mean," provided it is 
that "golden mean " which is always honorable. 

A further evil is in the strength of that passion, which 
can oil rheumatic joints and stiffen infant knees. No curb 
can tame that mouth which can speak only such words as — 
bluster, bicker, bargain; craving, cupidity, cling ; greed, gripe, 
grudge ; rapacity ; scuffle, scrape, scramble. The galled crea- 
ture may be racked by remorse ; but the groaning lust will 
not die. Now he may wearily wallow for the meanest food, 
or as a lion he may roar till all the dark plains echo ; he 
may then ramble after his uneasy gains, groping, dragging 
his eager heart in the dust. It is this wild, random run- 
ning that makes the miser miserable. The rich man is per- 
plexed: "What shall I do?" He is as a troubled sea, that 
can find no rest: the tide is all the time surging, now com- 
ing, now going ; showing to those that dwell by the beach, 
now high flood, and now naked sands and filthy flats. 

Another item in the vanity of wealth is, that the admir- 
ing rabble see only the dance, but never the dangers of 
wealth. They see the golden head and silver arms and 
breast, while brazen thighs and iron legs and the clay feet 
arc hid : the things which crush the clay, grind all the im- 
age, and send it as chaff before the wind, are also hidden. 
AVealth is like a ship in the fog, every moment liable to meet 
a Leviathan or an iceberg ; and the more swiftly it is sail- 
ing, the sooner may come the crash. That wealth, which 
swells and rises toward the clouds, may fall by any arrow. 



SLEEPLESS. 66 

Again, wealth is vanity, if we consider that the weariness 
of the rich man's work has little more reward than if he had 
no wealth. Did the man own the whole world, he could 
enjoy little more of it than one of his hirelings of equal men- 
tal and physical capacity. Tugging in his galley, he is dis- 
tinguished only by the fact, that his chain is of gold. 

Again, the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to 
sleep : wrapped in a labyrinth of affairs and worn with care, 
fortune is not valued ; the love of labor, and its rest, is the 
only emotion. Then comes a swarm of vexations, petty yet 
powerful, as the wasps and hornets of Canaan. Small sor- 
rows chase and pester the coveting man ; flying in his face 
by night, as noisome insects infest the moments of our at- 
tempted rest. The man of cares can only dream of the Por- 
tress of Hell, tormented by the gnawing of her own children. 
In the hours of his evening music, his mind cannot but dance 
before some kingly plan of his ; and that mad royal ambi- 
tion pierces him with golden javelins. He can have no rest. 
The coin must be kept hot, stinging as well as shining. 
He must not merely swing on golden hooks, and stretch on 
the golden spikes : he must be crushed under the car of his 
idolatrous labors. He must die. If he has outridden the 
storms, let him, in the very harbor itself, sink by the grow- 
ing weight of his treasure. The very prosperity of fools 
destroys them. To morrow may not be as this day ; for the 
more abundant heat of to morrow will wither the flower. 

It is a matter for praise, that covetousness at last "hoards 
itself poor." 

The treasures of wickedness profit nothing. 



3± THE GODS ANGRY. 

The greedy of gain trouble their own house. 
Giving no alms to day, they are unable to give to morrow 
Eefusing to give alms, their children need them. 
Riches are not for ever, nor doth the crown endure to all 
generations. 



The ancients believed., that their gods were jealous of the 
•overgrown power of the rich. It is related, that King Croe- 
sus, hearing this suggestion, hardened himself; and was 
straightway so shaken by misfortune, that his life would 
have ended in flames, had not the deities remembered one 
or two munificent charities he had long since laid in store 
against this evil day. 

AVhether the gods be jealous or only just, they come at 
last to judge the vain man. G-ehazi, begging gold, begs 
the leprosy. Hezekiah, showing his wealth, shows his pov- 
erty to an enemy. The proud Nebuchadnezzar is put to 
•cultivating his nails as the birds, and eating grass as the ox- 
<en ; which kingly business may have been the most innocent 
•employment of his life. A gilded worm, shining in the night, 
is soon crushed. Strong as we are, we are often shaken in 
the fist of the Almighty. The movement of the smallest of 
God's muscles sends our hugest plans to the mad house. 
Xerxes is not the only man who finds his boat bridges bro- 
ken for the sport of the playful sea. If the wind lifts the 
myriad hands of the ocean, the wealth and armies of a world 
go down, as a quick feast, for the fat millions of the deep. 
The fire king cracks his stinging whip full in our mad faces, 



THE MALEDICTIONS. 35 

and drives off brick blocks and their weight of gold, and, 
tumbling them into his treasury, draws out a few ashes by 
way of return. Nor is he the only money changer that for- 
ces us. The wings of wealth cannot be counted : we look, 
and it is gone. 

Where much is, there are many things to consume it ; 
and what hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes ? 

It is like grasping snow in the hand : the harder it is 
pressed, the sooner it melts. 

The rich man's wealth is his strong city; but the Lord 
hath given a commandment against the merchant city, to 
destroy the strong holds thereof. Is this your joyous city 
whose antiquity is of ancient days? Her own feet shall 
carry her afar off to sojourn. Who hath taken this counsel 
against the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, 
whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth ? The Lord 
of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and 
to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth. Do 
briers and thorns set themselves against God in battle ? He 
will gather them, and burn them, together. 

He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and consider- 
ed not that poverty shall come upon him. 

Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished. 

The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity, 
tossed to and fro of them that seek death. 

In the fulness of his sufficiency, he shall be in straits. 

Woe unto them that join house to house, and lay field to 
field, till there be no place, that they may be alone in the 
midst of the earth ! 



36 woes. 

Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his ! 
Woe to him that procureth wicked gains for his house, 
That he may establish his nest on high. 

God says of the rich man's idol, — 

"There it is overlaid with gold and silver; but there is no 
breath at all within it." 

The career of "victorious villainy" is soon ended. 

Jehovah slings the wicked as out of a sling. 

God forces on men the fate and confession of Adonibezek, 

"As I have done, so God hath requited me." 

Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from 
his house. 

The wicked are snared in their own devices, when the 
Lord shall have them in derision. 

He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed 
no mercy. 

It shall be ill with him ; for the reward of his hands thall 
be given him. 

Those clogs which at first feast on Naboth, at the last fat- 
ten on the blood of Ahab and Jezebel. 

He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker. 

The Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of 
those that spoiled them. 

The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all 
that are oppressed. 

This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the 
heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Al- 
mighty. 



HELPLESS REBELS. 37 

If his children "be multiplied, it is for the sword ; and his 
offspring shall not he satisfied with hread. 

Those that remain of him shall he buried in death ; and 
his widows shall not weep. 

As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not ; 
so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them 
in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool. 
They that trust in riches shall fall. 
Though firm in wealth as the roots of hills, yet those 
mountains shall melt in the heat of God's coming. 

He that bringeth the princes to nothing, that maketh the 
judges of the earth as vanity, shall blow upon them ; and 
they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away 
as stubble. 

What profit hath he that laboreth for the wind ? 
A shadow follows those on whom the sun shines. 
If any trust in oppression and become vain in robbery, 
God strips them ; and men shall clap their hands, and hiss 
them out of their place. 

What though one owned all New England, if he himself 
is owned by the Master of the Universe, and is a rebel 
against that Master ; loving only silver, and trying to be sat- 
isfied with increase of abundance. Such a war for wealth 
is fearful ; since one is liable to be oppressed at every turn. 
How true now the Castilian adage, "He travels safest in 
the dark night, who travels lightest." The weight of treas- 
ure in the dangerous ways is a loss, as of the soldiers, bat- 
tling with the waves of the Bed Sea, encumbered with heavy 
armor. As a retreating army fling away the spoils for which 



38 VANITY. 

they fought ; so, in all this world, we are but invalid soldiers, 
wearily marching through an enemy's country : we gladly 
toss out our choicest gold, and snatch in return that bread 
which shall give strength to our flight or our battles. 

In such days of grief, we appreciate the old poet, who 
summed up the exceeding glory of the world asa " nothing 
between two dishes," and we shame ourselves for having tried 
so long to get the cover off; or. we quote Solomon, "All things 
have I seen in the days of my vanity," that is in my vain days; 
or we call to witness Gelimer King of Vandals, when chang- 
ing fortune brought him captive to Constantinople, and he 
too cried through the streets, "Vanity of vanities! Vanity 
of vanities!" There is abundant testimony in the same 
direction with that of Lord Nelson in his bitterness, "lam 
now perfectly the great man, and I envy none but those of 
the estate of six feet by two ; or as Talleyrand, at eighty 
three, "filled with a profound sentiment of discourage- 
ment with regard to the future, and of disgust for the past. " 

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver ; 
nor he that loveth abundance, with increase : this is also 
vanity. 



The shell fish, that finds a pearl in his house, knows that 
a vexing death is near ; so the child of wealth trembles lest 
the cares of gold consume him before his time. 

Eiches are for only one vexatious day : that day itself has 
an end. Not only are the riches uncertain, but life itself is 



DEATH. 39 

uncertain. If a man all his days eat in darkness, he can 
have only sorrow and wrath in his sickness. The strength 
of his sinews crack under disease. The honorable clay is 
soon broken. The gilded vehicle will stop at the grave. 
When the game is over, queens and pawns are swept off 
together. The man, being in honor, abideth not, but is like 
the beasts that perish. One may remember the old compar- 
ison of Augustine, that the rich are like beasts of burden, 
carrying treasure all day, and at the night of death unladen : 
they carry to their graves only the bruises and marks of 
their toil. Thomas Boston writes: " This world is a great 
inn on the road to eternity, to which thou art travelling. 
Thou art attended by these things, as servants belonging to 
the inn where thou lodgest : they wait upon thee while thou 
art there ; and, when thou goest away, they will convoy thee 
to the door. But they are not thine : they will not go away 
with thee, but return to wait on other strangers as they did 
on thee." 

Cortes having ravaged Mexico, on fleeing the city, had to 
leave vast treasure on the floor of his late lodging place ; so 
the man, suddenly called into eternity, suddenly quits his 
grasp, drops his sovereigns and crowns, and is off in haste. 
When the sweat drops of the last agony fall on the coin, the 
shining turns to rust. The heaps look small. The greatness 
of dust piled up in the coffer looks mean, when its owner's dust 
is about to be piled up in the coffin. "Two hundred thous- 
and pounds," said Erskine, "a pretty sum to begin the next 
world with !" So feels the victim with no further use for 
earthly currency. If riches could wear the same face in 



40 BRIBING DEATH. 

our life that they wear at our death, we should turn them 
off as messengers of wrath designed to act as witnesses 
against us in the judgment. On the death bed we may 
compare pottage and the birth right ; the plumes of earth 
and the wings of angels. Our kings will not wear their 
crowns in the judgment day. The dying rich are torment- 
ed by visions of the woe they might have relieved, and of 
those beggars who might now bring to them drops of water. 
Then is reckoned over the sorrow in getting wealth, the 
sorrow in keeping, the sorrow in losing, the sorrow in ac- 
counting ; and yet it is written, that the rich have had their 
consolation. The suggestion of an infernal comforter, that 
they may soon be beyond the reach of religious beggars, 
and that no "agent" will follow them, comes ill at such a 
day. 

Under the pressure of terrible reflections, and with no use 
for gold, they are very free with it. They may at first, as it 
were, try to bribe death. The dying king of Prussia could 
have an army defile before him, to keep off the fear of death. 
Napoleon put on his military dress, and met death as he 
would a foe. Thus the rich, anon, hope to buy him off. 
It is told, that one of the kings of France would put money 
into the hands of his physician, every time it pleased that 
functionary to hint a word about death ; and that thus he 
gave up fifty five thousand crowns in five months. One of 
our own rich merchants offered his physician a hundred 
thousand dollars to prolong his miserable life three days ; 
yet in one hour Death, a great robber, took him and scattered 
his cash. Said Cardinal Beaufort, "And must I then die? 



"POMP, RULE, REIGN, DUST." 41 

Will not all my riches save me? I could purchase a 
kingdom, if that would save my life. What I Is there no 
bribing death? " The Queen Elizabeth said, "All my pos- 
sessions for a moment of time." 

In this dying hour, men confess that silver cannot satisfy. 
They moan in despair ; not knowing which way to turn. 
The dying Eachel gazed on the gifts of many princes : "Why 
have I to part with all these so soon? " The dying Mel 
grasped the badge of Marshal of France, and said, "Alas! 
this is a mighty fine thing in this country ; but I am going 
to a country where it will be of no use to me I" The Car- 
dinal Mazarin, having two months to live, was found, with 
night cap and dressing gown, tottering through his gallery ; 
pointing to his pictures, — "Must I quit all these?" Then 
he was dressed and painted, and had courtiers pass before him, 
and died with that kind of cards in his hands, which are most 
fit if one thinks of visiting at Satan's gate ! It is a kingly 
speech : — • 

"Lo ! now, my glory smeared in dust and blood! 

My parks, my walks, my manors that I had, 

Even now, forsake me ; and of all my lands 

Is nothing left me, but my body's length ! 

Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust ? 

And live we how we can, yet die we must." 

It is a Spanish king, dying, who says: "What doth all 
my glory profit, but that I have so much the more torment 
in my death ? " The noble, the dying Saladin ordered a 

4* 



42 DEAD AND EMBALMED. 

messenger to take his shroud, fasten it to his flagstaff, which 
had borne down so many battles ; and carry it through the 
streets, crying, " This is all that is left of all his greatness 
to the mighty Saladin !" Cyrus, Emperor of Persia, ordered 
this epitaph : " man ! whatsoever thou art, and whenceso- 
ever thou comest, I know that thou wilt come to the same 
condition in which I now am : I am Cyrus, who brought the 
empire to the Persians : do not envy me, I beseech thee, 
this little piece of ground which covereth my body ! " 

" Why dost thou heap up wealth which thou must quit, 

Or, what is worse, be left by it ? 
Why dost thou load thyself, when thou'rt to fly, 

man ! ordained to die ? 
Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, 

Thou who art under ground to lie ? 
Thou sowest and plantest, but no fruit must see ; 

For death, alas! is reaping thee." 

Yet suffice it that the grasping rich die, and are buried ; 
gone to enrich the soil. Going to their graves, what better 
are they than the dead Incas, having their every palace 
abandoned, their treasures, their furniture, their royal robes, 
sealed up for ever ; and they the dead filed away in a row of 
embalmed kings, seated indeed on golden thrones, with 
hands folded and heads bent as in devotion, there to rest ; 
but soon to be overrun and robbed by the graceless hunter 
for gold. The gilded tomb admits the worm. The silver 
veil covers a face of deformity. 



THE RIOT. 43 

Thoroughly dead and thoroughly "buried, the next ques- 
tion is, What has become of the property ? The rich must 
die poor, leave his all : to day talking of tearing down his 
old barns, to night he dies, and hurries off; while the barns 
are left standing. There is now and then a dying gift to 
Christ, as an acknowledgment of the lack of living service. 
Having done with the gold, Christ may have it ; as if some 
coat, now grown too small. The death bed returns to God, 
the spoils of a bad life, as of an unsalted sacrifice. A man 
dying will give to Christ, though as a dying man he will not 
give. Having stolen from God so long as in life, he will 
now steal from his heirs to give to God. He is free with 
what is no longer his. It is not his gift : Death gives it. 
His charity is, "The triumph of death over avarice." No 
good Samaritan ever hoarded through life, and then "be- 
queathed " money to assist waylaid travellers. Yet oftenest 
the will is like a recent one, fifteen millions, and not one 
cent to God. As hounds catch game for others' eating, they 
have snappingly watched the property till the Infernal Mas- 
ter set one to use it. This using and wasting is an item in 
the dread of dying. It is written in Eccl. ii. 18, 19, — 

I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun ; 
because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. 

And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a 
fool? 

Yet, judging from the tenor of the following verses, he 
would be a fool. Yet this fool better have it than God, so 
it be kept from God another generation. These moneys 
turn out, mostly, as with those plunderers who in a night 



44 HEAVEN. 

gambled away a golden face of the sun, the pride of a holy 
temple. Says the Spanish proverb, "Play away the sun before 
sunrise." Kioting heirs waste what they never earned. 

While they roll in gold and guilt, let us return to the 
rich man's grave, and ask which way the soul went. 



Doubtless, some Numerius Atticus, if well paid for it, 
will swear that he saw this Augustus ascend to heaven. 
To heaven ? Ay ! but not to worship God. For this he 
wants not paradise, but because it was the ancient seat of 

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 

From heaven ; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts 

Were always downward bent." 

So this his votary desires heaven, that, like his patron 
saint, he may turn his head from the face of God, and eter- 
nally bow to 

"The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold." 

But, alas ! if the Koran be true, heaven is not his lot. 
The false prophet says, "The fruits of covetousness shall be 
bound as a collar round the neck at the resurrection." If 
so, some will wear huge millstones. Who shall read and 
heed the Arabic curse on the grovelling habits, swinish shape, 
the crooked paths and distorted feet, useless intellects and 
reversed heads of those greedy of filthy lucre ? Count up 



A WORSE PLACE? 45 

the life, and you count the eternal life. The Maelstrom 
opens ; it sweeps the sea of every poor man's vessel. Look 
at the grasping man, the grave of God's mercies, the yawn- 
ing pit in which are "buried whole generations of heavenly 
favor. His arm reaches out into the past, grasps all good 
since the flood. The best of all things he has. Men, pierced 
body and soul with the arrows of poverty, look to him, get 
nothing ; then they cry to heaven that this living grave may 
quickly give up his treasure, and be cast into hell. The 
Book answers. Ay ! the coal which absorbed all light, gath- 
ers heat for burning. 

" The extortioner's hand foregoes the gold 
Wrung from the o'er worn poor." 

Dives has nothing, though he died worth half a million. 
The child was rich and spoiled : the adult soul now grinds 
in poverty. 



The most successful coveting life is vain and vexed in 
life and in death. Who, then, will seek the Unselfish Life ? 

" Extol not riches then, the pride of fools." 

Stop not for golden apples, and thus lose the race of life. 

" Leave the vain, low strife, that makes men mad ; 

The tug for wealth and power ; 
The passions and the cares that wither life, 

And waste its little hour." 



46 LABOR NOT TO BE RICH. 

Labor not to be rich : cease from thine own wisdom, — 
which bids thee be rich. 

Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For 
riches certainly make themselves wings ; they fly away, as 
an eagle, toward heaven. 

Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves 
bags which wax not old ; a treasure in the heavens, that 
faileth not ; where no thief approacheth, neither moth cor- 
rupted. 



THE LUXURIOUS LIFE. 



The evils rising from coveting are doubtless great, "but 
are the source of less mischief to the race than the misuse 
of wealth. Money is a power to bless the whole race ; and, 
so long as the race is needy, money is misused if it be spent 
either directly for individual gratification over and above 
the necessities of life, or if it be spent for the race, and yet 
be so spent that the lower wants of the race are better sup- 
plied than the higher wants. In speaking of individual 
gratification, limiting the expense to the necessities of life, 
the word "necessities" may embrace much more than a bare 
living: it may be a necessity of a man's position, or of his 
taste, or of his physical infirmity, that he spend for the so 
called "comforts of life" that which otherwise might go to 
rescue the perishing ; and, so far as4t is necessity that com- 
pels him, the spending cannot be called "misuse. " Again, 
in speaking of the supply of the lower wants of the race, it 
may be difficult to say of many specific things that they im- 
ply any misuse of money. That which elevates the race 
physically, tends to the noblest spiritual elevations. But 
while the greater part of mankind are ignorant of their re- 
lationship to God, and make little eflbrt, and that often ill 
directed, to attain to a God-like life, — while this necessity 
is on the masses, it becomes a "necessity of life, " to ev- 
ery man, who can do any thing to relieve the ignorance of 



50 JEWELS AND FUNERALS. 

the race, to do it. This necessity may be more imperative in 
its demands than any "gratification of taste," when that 
taste diverts money from the more direct good of mankind. 

Could we connt up the immense sums that have been used 
for individual pleasure, or in supplying the lower wants 
of the race, and in the same connection, see how how little 
is devoted to the moral elevation of man, we might then be 
constrained, not to commence a crusade against the com- 
forts of miserable men, but to teach men the comfort there 
is in self-denial and the Unselfish Life ; and seek to incite 
men to at least as much zeal in spending for God, in saving 
the lost, as they now have in spending for folly or fancy. 



We need not say much of the most ancient gatherings 
and disbursings, only one or two lines for a sign. Though 
we know little of the wealth of that Babylon whose defences 
seemed more immortal than magnificent, while the wonder 
was how art could form it, or how art could destroy it, we 
yet know that there was a life within those walls, which 
made the name of that city the perpetual synonym ' of sin- 
ful gain and sinful spending. Later, in that plain, it is 
related that one king wore personal jewelry to the worth of 
more than ten million dollars, while another king spent 
nearly fourteen millions on a funeral, making many funerals 
to obtain the means. 

Looking up the spendfulness of Eome, we give figures 
that have floated about, and been believed by more or less 
of our modern paupers. 



PIRATES AND COOKS. 51 

Young Eome thought nothing of a ten million dollar debt. 
One beginning life that way, being taken by pirates, who de- 
manded twenty five thousand dollars for a ransom, laughed 
at them, and gave them forty three thousand. He still lived, 
had a triumph, had three thousand golden crowns borne 
before him, feasted the mob at twenty two thousand tables, 
and made presents of ten dollars each to three hundred 
and twenty thousand people. Another ruler had for a 
debt at one time fifteen millions, and, having paid this, 
squandered not far from twenty five millions more. An 
inferior officer exhausted thirty millions in seven months. 
An Emperor left a hundred and eight millions, which his 
successor spent in a twelvemonth. The philosopher who 
wrote in praise of poverty was worth seventeen millions. 
The great orator modestly built a house for two hundred 
thousand dollars, while a near neighbor spent half a mil- 
lion. One man of pride triumphed in a vest of gold. One 
woman of pride wore a robe woven of golden wire. We 
read of a feast that cost three hundred and seventy thou- 
sand dollars ; of one dish, and of one drink, of the same cost. 
The breakfast of one great gormandizer cost enough to en- 
rich a hundred families, while another dined on two thou- 
sand fishes and seven thousand birds. A poor fellow, whose 
debaucheries had cost him two millions and a half, looking 
up his books, found he had only half a million left ; and in 
despair of living on that, poisoned himself. An emperor 
called up senators by night to consult on the cooking of a 
fish. The choice schools of Eome were for the cooks, or to 
teach mastication. Kitchens, fish ponds, and bird palaces 



52 USELESS ORNAMENTS. 

were adorned in a style more splendid than the public 
buildings. 

However little we may confide in such figures, doubtless 
they are "founded on fact." It was a day when Philanthro- 
py was scarce born, while the channels of a luxurious life 
flowed full and free. Was there no call, in those ages, for 
any power of money in elevating the masses of men, who 
groaned in toil and ignorance and superstition? Could 
there be no use of so much gold in raising the fallen ? How- 
ever much such spendfulness may have given employment 
to the hands of the needy, could the moneys have been em- 
ployed in no more enobling works, in developing the souls 
of the needy ? 

We turn from the contemplation of such' wealth and 
spending, much as did the ladies from the exhibition of that 
empress who ordered in all her caskets, and loaded spacious 
tables with pearls, opals, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds en- 
circled with diamonds; saying that, by this display, she 
would discourage her friends from seeking such stones, as 
they could never find any others so splendid, — and, as these 
were useless ornaments, not to envy that splendor, which 
does not constitute happiness. 



How stand Moderns in gaining and giving for self? 

Count up the fineries of Paris, its widening riches of parks, 
drives, and buildings ; pleasing to the eye and elevating to 
the tastes and morals of the people : but is there no more 



WANTON MAGNIFICENCE. 53 

direct way of reaching and rousing the souls of the sans 
cidotte f The nephew of a man, who could spend eight hun- 
dred million dollars in the hundred days between Elba and 
Helena, can well afford three or four score millions a year 
for an army, with which to promote civilization ; but if one 
half of it were devoted to gigantic schemes of "moral sua- 
sion," would not Europe be more civil? If we read that 
eighty millions are yearly spent by Erench wine bibbers, we 
may not wonder at the further spending of a tithe as much 
more for perfumes, and ten millions more for golden orna- 
ments. Would France and the world be no wiser in disbursing 
eighty millions a year to promote the free flow of the 
wine of God's truth ; eight millions for sending abroad 
the perfumes of holy lives ; and ten millions to secure the 
ornament of meek and quiet spirits ? Eive millions worth of 
jewels may well shine at a bridal dinner amid the " wanton 
magnificence" of Parisian life; but how much is given to 
adorn the intellect and cheer the heart of that Erench peo- 
ple ? Though Paris hospitals spend every year eight times 
the cost of our most expensive missionary board, yet the 
lament is recorded by their most zealous ministers of Christ 
that their religious charities "vegetate rather than live." 
Does the Gaul make no complaint of the luxurious life ? 

How with the Britain ? There is wealth enough. Cross- 
ing the channel the first of the marvels of London is that 
golden bank, from which nightly an army of clerks march 
out and a regiment of soldiers march in. Going up into 
the country, we find a marquis with a hundred and five 
million dollars of property. We then visit a man who rides 



54 john bull's bullion. 

from his door to the sea a hundred miles in a straight line 
on his own estate. We then find a county reaching across 
Scotland, owned by one high titled man. Another has just 
added some ninety six thousand acres to his old lands. An- 
other duke adds up as his sum thirty thousand acres plus 
three hundred thousand. An agriculturist buys up an 
island of half a million acres. Beside this specimen of old 
England's earnings, we find a worthy specimen of young 
England's spending, that of a boy bringing in a bill of eighty 
thousand dollars a year for college expenses ! Great Lon- 
don, with fifty streets crowded as Broadway, can portion out 
and support a hundred jewellers to the two score and 
ten streets. A tunnel under the Thames costs a million 
dollars, and a bridge over it ten times as much. English 
capital can bridge a broad Canadian river with six millions. 
English capital can build under one engineer railways 
worth four thousand millions, giving one hundred and sev- 
enty millions to her Indian empire. English capital can 
keep three hundred and twenty five millions in the cotton 
business, and send from her ports in a year a thousand mil- 
lion dollars worth of goods. More than twenty thousand 
vessels wait on her commerce : a fleet of sixteen hundred go 
to Asia ; six hundred sail to Africa. How many missionary 
vessels go to Asia ? How much gospel sails for Africa ? 

Modest Victoria's household costs as much as all the Brit- 
ish Christian Missions. The English take praiseworthy pains 
to maintain an armed force land and sea ; in time of peace 
costing ninety millions a year. They pay out sixteen 
millions for shooting civilization into China, or lay out ten 



HIS FIGHTING HORNS. 55 

millions for fear of being obliged to send a war mission to 
the land of the pope. Two hundred millions are spent in giv- 
ing a lesson of civility to the Eussian bear. Nearly two 
thousand millons were used up in opposing Bonaparte. This 
can all be afforded to keep up with European custom, whose 
standing war tax is seven hundred millions a year. Chris- 
tian England reads, that, since the Prince of peace came, 
there have been about three hundred distinct wars ; and ar- 
gues that Christian England should have a hand to make a 
good part of the figuring. While a round fourth part of the 
population of the earth are under English Empire or protec- 
tion, it is yet wise to spend yearly thirty five times as much 
for guns and powder as for sending abroad the sword of the 
spirit and the knowledge of the power of the God of hosts. 
Though England has seven fold the missionary spirit of all 
Europe, and bears only a seventh part of the war expenses 
of Europe, yet it makes an awkward figure to read, that 
England, the flower of the old world's Christianity, yearly 
spends more for armament than has gone out in all Christian 
charities for a whole half century ; and that, for the past 
sixty years, the English soldier has been paid five hun- 
dred times as much as the English schoolmaster ! 

England has one crowning, redeeming glory. It is, that 
she paid a hundred millions to free eight hundred thousand 
blacks, — so much for buying their bodies ; yet for the souls 
of these same blacks, Britain has had little care or expense. 
Their liberty is of worth ; but a missionary machinery, costing 
a tenth part as much as their physical redemption, would 



56 UNCLE SAM. 

better pay the investment than the one which is so justly the 
pride of all Englishmen ! 

There is a great English money power, used indeed for 
the benefit of man, but only in his lower wants. Is it pos- 
sible to find any such large figuring in any English outlay for 
the direct benefit of English or Colonial heads and hearts ? 
The amounts used are enough to have gladdened many peo- 
ple with intellectual or spiritual life : if they are diverted 
to meaner channels, the mischief rising from the lack of 
that money is an argument in favor of an Unselfish Life. 



Coming to the United States, we find few of the rich ; two 
or three rising up toward a score of millions, and the rest 
falling at five millions, and thus quite below to the common 
millionaires, these scarce numbering a round dozen in our 
chief cities. Merchants discredit the account of one fifteen 
million adventure of the old shipper Solomon. 

Yet this same commerce is rich, — owning town and county; 
laying claim to ice fields and torrid acres; using God's 
stars and God's storms ; the tide, the tornado, and telegraph 
are made servants of trade. This same commerce is rich in 
the cheerful toils of its myriad votaries. Men wearily 
drag over the seas, waiting for gigantic prey ; or dive into 
the deeps for treasure. Great shift is made in tearing the 
face of the earth, cutting through hills, and living under 
mountains, for the sake of gold. The roads to our golden 
countries are all strewed with the bones of men. The spirit 



REPUBLICAN COTTON. 57 

of expensive adventure is wakeful for those selfish gains, 
which go before selfish spending ; and this strength is di- 
verted from the noblest good of the race. Men are willing 
to go to Africa to sell savage instruments of murder, or to 
China to arm pirates or to steal Coolies at a profit of two 
hundred dollars a head ; while few go to either place with 
offers of Christ's peace. Thieves travel by night to rob and 
kill ; but honest men will not rise from quiet sleep, and go 
out into the dark to defend the helpless. 

The outlay of this whole commercial generation is for 
Mammon more than for man. An Atlantic Cable and a Levia- 
thian, however costly, have been brought into being because of 
the distant dividends. Is there any telegraphic arrangement 
by which men may commune with heaven, hourly telling hu- 
man needs, and hourly finding a divine reply ? Will this 
commercial generation pay for teaching men to operate this 
line? 

Two hundred and thirty million dollars are yearly paid 
for American labor on cotton. Yet one of Christ's mills, 
which annually performs nearly nine hundred years of min- 
isterial labor, and reports in a single year sixty revivals 
and thirty six hundred converts, is often left to lag ; and 
its operatives suffer for food and clothing, though the cost 
of the concern is less than two hundred thousand dollars a 
year. This gathering of souls is valued less than "cash 
returns." 

The cost of the American Board for half a century, is al- 
most dollar for dollar answered in the cost of a certain New 
England railroad. The shareholders in each concern may 



3 A GOOD INVESTMENT. 

count for themselves, who "sunk the money" and who found 
a good "investment." Stars in a heavenly crown are worth 
more than railroad stock quoted at "sixteen and three 
quarters ! " Three hundred and fifty five and a half millions 
can be invested in American railways, — one third of it by 
figure being wasted in the making, — and much of the stock 
far below par ; while enterprises, which think to lay out 
half a million a year in Bibles for a worldful of immortals 
have to go begging, and then get scolded for their " agen- 
cies." 

Now a railway is proposed to help men move into the 
Golden State. One hundred and twenty million dollars is 
called for, and will be shortly had; yet what new fa- 
cilities, shall be offered, that the multitudes, who would 
journey toward God's Golden Gate, may not wander from 
the way and die in deserts? 

On the Pacific coast, in fine view of the Golden Gate, is a 
minute enterprise, as the world reckons it, yet the choicest 
enterprise which has of late been born into the world, — a 
Christian educational concern, which looks to the guiding of 
the moral and intellectual force, not only of our further 
coast, but reaches far out in its ambition ; seeking to become 
a missionary head, which shall get strong hold on four hun- 
dred million Chinese, and affect all Christ's interests on the 
largest ocean. This enterprise which seeks to fortify the Pa- 
cific with Christ's ministers, and aid in the attack on the 
stout heart of heathendom, may starve and sturdily beg a 
hundred years, before it gets one per cent of the material 
aid which the Pacific Eailroad claims to begin with. 



FIVE mission ships! 59 

The annual trade of the Pacific Islands, the Chinese and 
Amoor shores, counts up two hundred and fifty millions. 
One per cent of this, if devoted to magnificent missionary 
enterprises, would more effectually open China than all the 
English and French guns. Yet, in twenty nine years, the 
American people have laid out in Chinese missions only about 
one tenth part of a cent for the conversion of each soul in that 
empire. Were Americans left with that allowance of gos- 
pel ministration, how soon would they he shipped as Coolies 
to serve the Celestials? 

This is a year of wonder, because, the world being six 
thousand years old, there are now "five mission ships in the 
Pacific!" Is this generation afraid to sail on the sea? 
"What say those ships on the African coast ? Taking the 
average, more slavers have sailed every month than mission 
ships in a year. While it costs too much to send Christ's 
ministers, Satan's missionaries have gone without counting 
the cost. What zeal so long as a fleet of forty ships could 
average a profit of four hundred and twenty five thousand 
dollars a year ! What wonder that the fleet doubled under 
the vigilant eyes of Christian cruisers ! Is life of any 
worth ? Satan's men will risk it. A negro's body is three 
hundred and sixty five dollars clear profit ; while to send to 
Africa, and gain his priceless soul, would take a trifle from 
the Christian's pocket. A slave trader lived with his hun- 
dred wives on that deadly coast for forty years. A slave 
trader lived to send off half a million slaves, caused half a 
million more to die by that business, and half a million more 
to be enslaved in Africa. When one child of light shall go to 



60 A FEW SLAVE SHIPS. 

Africa, and send to the service of heaven that number of souls, 
then the memory of the two hundred slave and pirate forts, so 
long since built on the negro coast, shall fade out. Till then, 
let every child of the light claim to be less wise, less bold, than 
the children of the devil. Christian ships have sailed round 
Cape Horn these two hundred years ; yet thousands who see 
the ships pass never heard whether there be any Christ or 
any Holy Ghost. Ships have robbed Africa for three hundred 
and eighty years ; and thousands there, who know of it, be- 
lieve the Christian nations are all murderers. 

The large expense laid out as the seed of selfish gains, in 
its diversion from those nobler investments which promote the 
common good of humanity, shows the prevalence of the sel- 
fish life and its mischiefs, and is thus an argument for the 
Unselfish Life. 



A further diversion of money is found in the liberal out- 
lay for human Government, while little is paid for the pro- 
motion of a Divine government among men. Men submit to 
large political taxes for the smallest chance of office under 
new administrations. The expense of small, close States, in 
one election, rises to half a million. If the cost of a Presi- 
dential election in diffusing information, and in vile uses, 
could be used to give information to the heathen of their 
chance to be elected to the court of God, and in persuading 
them to make that election sure, doubtless the chances of 
the race for an elevated life would be vastly improved. 



FOURTH OF JULY. 61 

Presidents must be elected; it costs something: but the hea- 
then must be saved: who will be zealous to pay the cost ? 

If all the expensive follies of our Fourth of July could 
have been spent in making statutes of our patriots, our land 
would now be crowded with more monuments of the glorious 
dead than base signs of their tar and gunpowder posterity ; 
or if the cash had gone to make other nations free from des- 
potism, ere now, many nations would rejoice in this inde- 
pendence and the machinery of a political millennium would 
now be working among all people ; or could it have beer 
spent for the promotion of God's kingdom, many distant col- 
onies of Satan would have been revolutionized. 

Again, who complains of governmental wastes, as much 
as of any mission wastes in some poorly fed corporation? 
Three hundred millions spent in one administration, in time 
of peace, make less talk than would the loss of one hun- 
dredth part of a million by some indiscreet board of charity. 

Again, is more money spent to punish crime than to hin- 
der it ? A boy of fourteen years has two thousand dollars 
spent in prosecuting him, which laid out for his moral and in- 
tellectual training might have set his energy in a better track. 

Again, coast regulations are a sign of wisdom. Twenty 
eight millions have been laid out on United States lights ; 
nearly eight hundred thousand a year are now spent on 
them, and it is thought only decent to do so. But when 
the same money is spent on moral lighthouses to hinder the 
wreck of souls, it is heralded by much glorious talk, as 
though the country were indeed in some wondrous, generous 
work! 



62 SIX SHOOTERS. 

If it is praiseworthy that the Government expend on the 
Indians two hundred thousand dollars in thirty years, and 
now disburse six millions, would it not be a praiseworthy 
thing to spend a tithe of it in the moral improvement of 
the red men ? 

It is desirable to have a Japan expedition at seven times 
the cost of Chinese missions ; yet who will pay for teaching 
them to open commerce with heaven ? 

Worldly wisdom builds a ship of war, but complains if 
it take one third the cost of it to support a mission craft. 
Worldly wisdom builds forts at a cost and time double that 
needful to planting a gospel mission in Central Asia; yet 
forts abound, and missions are scarce. 

The inventive genius of the Yankee is tried more in mak- 
ing rifles and war machines than in working against a spir- 
itual enemy. Our army and navy cost, in time of peace, 
every year, eighty times as much as all the charitable asy- 
lums of the country, fifty times as much as all our mission- 
ary money, and five times as much as fifty years have given 
to our oldest Missionary Board. It is less difficult to pay 
eight hundred thousand dollars for a mounted regiment of 
border soldiery, than to obtain a tithe of that money for the 
civilizing work of Indian missions. How easy to spend one 
hundred and sixty six millions, and twenty five thousand 
lives, in a Mexican war ! How hard to obtain one million for 
forwarding Christian influences, by which to make that state 
a good neighbor ! How much easier to raise money to kill 
out the rebellion that rises from slavery, than to raise far 



AN EVANGELIZING POAVER. 63 

less, and buy up all the slaves, and educate them into de- ' 
cent citizens ! 

Peace has some great disadvantages. Men lust for pro- 
perty; the best men avoid the conduct of government; 
corruption stalks abroad in the places of power, and in the 
counting room. War breaks up this habit, and destroys that 
property which ensnares the soul. War is a great civilizer ; 
it is that rod which must subdue the will of ugly, muscular 
pupils, before their heads or hearts can be well improved. 
Let the cost of war be what it will, it is often cheaper, 
merely as missionary work, than the small outlay of many a 
feeble Evangelizing Society. When God will teach the re- 
fractory millions, he does not hesitate to charge them 
heavy tuition. Let the lands be stript of comfort rather 
than lose God's schooling. Even when we consider that a 
week of war costs more than fifty years of missionary enter- 
prises, we do not complain of the cost of needed wars ; 
but we argue that if it be worth the while to make an army 
strong handed at any cost, it is also wise to lend strong 
help to the soldiers who promote spiritual conquests. Little 
good is there in sending missionaries into communities, 
where the truth must be only half spoken, or the missionary 
meet with physical violence ; but when the barbarians are 
once subdued, is it not wise to bring strongly to bear that 
moral influence which alone will complete and adorn the 
conquest ? 

These governmental gun enterprises remind one of that 
golden cannon found in Mexico, which, because it absorbed 
one third of a million of money, was the delight of the na- 



64 TOBACCO. 

tion. Worldly wisdom delights in golden cannons. It is 
glad to keep off even the fear of an enemy at any cost. 
This is when the enemy only burn and kill ; while against 
him who is able to kill the souls of twelve hundred million 
people, they can yearly expend not much above the cost of 
that one golden gun ; while the enemy laughs at so small 
a battery, he hears the order given " Betrench," and he steps 
up to spike the gun ! 

Who shall rise and reckon how much of the cost of our 
American government might be used in supplying nobler 
needs of the common race ? Is this diversion of money no 
waste ? Is there here no mischief rising from a selfish life ? 
Does no man desire that more of an Unselfish Life be linked 
with our Kepublican life? 



How now about expense in the every day uses of life? 

During twenty seven years past the French people have 
paid for Tobacco money enough to support the A. B. C. F. M., 
at one hundred thousand dollars a year above the present 
cost, for a period covering twenty eight Jubilees! Every 
twelve months, enough is thus spent to support all the mis- 
sions for one generation. Every year, the United States 
pa} 7 s more for Opium, than for the support of the American 
Board. Our "Tobacco Apostle " gathers up facts. Eighteen 
centuries after Christ's death, there are only twelve million 
Evangelical church members. Four centuries after the 
discovery of printing, books are slowly coming to a wide use 
in civilized countries. But three centuries serve to spread 






"CHAMPIONS." 65 

Tobacco all over the globe. Snuffing, smoking, chewing 
go through Africa, Asia, Europe and America, — Europe and 
Asia using the least. All classes and all ages of stupid, 
and uncivilized, and christian people use it. An average 
of one dollar for every soul on the earth is yearly paid for 
it. The largest American city pays daily more for cigars 
than for bread. The country spends forty millions a year for 
it. The church, a full eight part of the population, pays 
one eighth of it. Is this no diversion of funds from good 
to evil use ? 

A high authority tells us, that every ten years, the Ameri- 
cans pay money enough for intoxicating liquors to send a 
teacher to every two thousand people of the globe, furnish- 
ing the machinery of the millenium. Is this a diversion of 
money to selfish ends, arguing our need of the Unselfish 
Life? It argues our need of a life unselfish enough to 
be at a little expense and courage in stopping up grog shops. 

Is there no other expense to fill this catalogue ? All Eng- 
land will make up a purse of twenty five thousand dollars 
for a prize fighter. That "bear," whose paws are stoutest 
in the fight, agitates all the London Exchange: the cheers 
rise for him ; all business is dropped till a hundred guineas 
can be counted out as a testimonial. For one month's spar- 
ring engagement, the "champions" get larger pay than the 
yearly salary of any minister of Christ, on either shore of 
the Atlantic. No wonder, if the generation, that will do 
this, let missions starve out ! 

The support of the turf in England is a million a year. 
New York theatres receive a million and a half yearly; 



66 A BIT OF PHILOSOPHY. 

men are patient under a long and filthy play, who weary 
with half an hour of gospel. 

Forty thousand dollars, and ten thousand extra for cham- 
paigne, are easily spent in a ball for the Japanese. "When 
there may be a call for funds for Japanese missions, will 
it be then hard to raise fifty thousand dollars? A hun- 
dred thousand are spent in entertaining these black princes, 
and half a million for a white prince, while one busy " Sa- 
tanic press," just on the eve of election, mourns and piously 
wishes that the money wasted on ball dress could go to buy 
up votes for a " coalition ! " 

A philosopher was once asked, Why men were so ready to 
give to the halt and blind and give nothing to philosophers ? 
His answer was, " They think that they may come to be halt 
and blind themselves, but are never likely to become philoso- 
phers." 

So with those men who give abounding charities to mean- 
est causes, and can give nothing for ennobling humanity. 
They think that, in some change, they may become double 
fisted brutes or dancing satyrs, but never look to be manly. 



Attend now to expenses still closer to the daily life. 

Worldly wisdom builds for itself and Mammon houses, 
whose sometime adorning is best figured by those old Aztec 
plates of gold and silver, which, large as carriage wheels 
and carved with all manner of plants and animals, rolled as 
perpetual signs of their wealthy year. Furniture, paint- 
ings, gorgeous windows rival the brilliant inventories of 



gloves! 67 

early Mexican nionarchs. Who spend so much for furnish- 
ing the "buildings of God to the houseless heathen? How 
might our silks, satins, jewels and embroidery, greatly excite 
the supicions of that shrewd Xenophon, who thought the 
Persians all enfeebled by luxury, because they wore gloves ! 

The plethoric children of a prodigal wealth bask in 
perpetual sunshine, rifling the earth for luxuries; under 
a lavish heat, luxuriating in the cool conveniences of the 
poles ; or under the Arctic circle revelling in the spoils of the 
tropics. In the regions of almost perpetual snow, the In- 
dian lily and splendid flowers, the palm trees and bananas, 
may burden the air with rich odors. Those who wallow in 
wealth, may riot in the copious treasures of all climes. 
Ample expense brings the exubriant growths of Mammon's 
world to his squandering children, and crowns them with 
the diamonds which have been long the pride of conquering 
kings. 

Those silks, which as if from some golden fleece, were once 
worth their weight in gold, are now worn at the rate of two 
hundred millions a year. Their cost in the United States in 
one year is six times the cost of our leading annual charities, 
and ten times the cost of all the foreign missionary societies 
of the world. 

There is a folly of dress, which only attracts attention to 
the deformities or ill breeding that might otherwise escape 
unreproved. Who shall pity the fashions, and pomp, and 
silliness, in which the children of pride are forced to walk, 
as in a slavery? A Hindoo Eajah spent fifty thousand 
dollars in marrying two monkeys with all the ceremony 



68 THREE CENTS. 

of a rich and idle humanity. Is such a scene ever repeated 
among the fair circles of England and America? Is there 
no pomp in dancing with the poetic tribe of the "golden 
leg," or marrying one of the descendants of the noble Peru- 
vian family of the twelve silver women? A hundred and 
fifty tribes of Africa take pride in democracy and petty king- 
ships, and families so small that all are born to rule; so each 
in her own small place, resides and reigns our pretty queen 
of the Bank Note, while all her little world cries, "Great 
is this Diana?" 

A woman in New York wore eight hundred dollars worth 
of furs into church, and then put three cents into the contri- 
bution box ! 

Is that the way with an Unselfish Life? 

Silver and golden mementos of the living or of the dead 
are precious; but fine gold is less precious than wisdom. 
What if, after they have been used a little season, they drop 
into the Lord's treasury ! Could there arise a self denying 
spirit, which should cheerfully, in view of the better riches, 
rob the ears, the arms, the fingers, the house adorning of 
needless ornament; would not the world be straightway 
blessed, drop the tools of the slave, adorn herself with 
beauty, and sit at the feet of Christ? 

Is it now as if the world were all full of Bibles and we 
chose to take them away and sell them for our ornaments? 
Do lady fingers, richly laden, shut up the Bible shops in 
Turkey, and put out the eyes of inquirers in India? 

Again, we count how this worldly wisdom gives to the 
support of domestic animals. Though we use no gold cloth 



WHAT SIDNEY SMITH ATE. 69 

for horses, nor the silver shoes of Pizarro's cavalry, yet in 
that christian year in which thirty thousand dollars can be 
invested in a two year old colt, the missionary spirit has not 
had full sweep. The cost of preaching is grumbled over ; 
the cost of pacing is gloried in. Men pay for what they 
most love. Who will pay for elevating the men who fare 
worse than some brutes, and who do not consider the end of 
life so well as does the ox the end of his life? 

Again, worldly wisdom feeds well. 

A curious English essayist, having ascertained the amount 
of food necessary to life, and that which he actually used, 
calculated, that, between the ages of ten years and seventy, 
he ate and drank about forty four one horse wagon loads of 
meat and drink more than would have preserved him in life 
and health ! The value of which would be thirty five thousand 
dollars: whereupon he judges that he must have starved to 
death more than n hundred of the race ! But he evidently 
placed little confidence in his figures, as we have no reason 
to suppose that he mended his habits ! 

Comfort of body conduces to comfort of mind, and no 
man has a right to depress the mind by prescribing the 
body. But how many fatten their own c!ay, and give not 
so much as the cost of the crumbs, to feed those who die of 
" famine of the words of the Lord?" 

" Taking them one with another," said the Bev. Sidney 
Smith, " I believe my congregation to be the most exemplary 
observers of religious ordinances, for the poor keep all the 
fasts and the rich all the feasts." 

When men once gain a "madness about the throat," 




70 THE POLAR NIGHT. 

they will spend first to eat, then spend for the doctor ; while 
the claims of the needy are unheeded. 

If we lay the world under tribute to help us through life ; 
may we not lay ourselves under tribute to help the world to 
an eternal life ? Six per cent of the yearly cost of tea in 
the United States will give six hundred thousand dollars ; 
but what family will save six per cent of their yearly cost 
of tea and send the gospel to China? 



It is with pleasure we mark the African missions, which 
are likely to spring in the path of Livingston. But is it 
not wise to compare the cost and zeal of scientific explora- 
tions, and the expeditions of a Christ like humanity? 

It is proper to furnish twenty voyages to seek a North- 
west passage. It is humane to spend twelve years, and three 
and a half million dollars, in seeking one man locked up in 
an ice bank. The horrors of the Arctic night may be prop- 
erly endured in the enterprise of science, and in the labor 
of love ; yet there are plenty of souls in that same Arctic 
night, wrapped in icy coldness far from the society or even 
the knowledge of a heavenly Friend. What zeal shall spend 
itself in kindling the aurora of Christ in those dread regions ? 

When we hear of starvation in the islands of the sea, or 
in our own borders, it is right to send them bread ; yet if 
they daily perish for lack of the knowledge of God, shall 
our zeal prompt us to do nothing? 

When disease sweeps off the masses in some city, or fire 



FRESH AIR. 71 

desolates a town, we may all lend help. Is there no help 
ready for the disease of sin, and the sweeping fires that Satan 
is always kindling ? 

They are the Brothers and Sisters of Mercy, who are 
mindful of the sick and the wounded in time of war ; but 
more merciful is that spirit, which displays itself in cheer- 
ing the soldier's heart with the hope of heaven ! No brilliant 
ball can please that general, whose soldiers are shirtless ; no 
fine uniform can cover the nakedness of an army, whose 
moral interests are uncared for. 

No sane man will doubt that the New York Central Park 
is a great missionary force; but if it is wise to spend so 
much for that, what money shall be poured out for the far 
nobler charities? More money has now been expended on 
that Park than the cost of the A. B. C. F. M. for fifty years ; 
and while fifty millions more are proposed for it, how many 
millions per year will American Missions find at their 
service ? The one is a place of fresh air for half a million 
of people : the other is a free gospel for twelve hundred 
millions, who know not of the free air of Christ's heaven. 

It is part of a worldly wisdom to patronize the Literature 
of luxury, full of a sentimental benevolence, or the praise of 
pride ; written by authors who seem to use those golden 
quills which figured in ancient commerce. Words worth 
fifty dollars a line are read and puffed, whether or not of 
any worth in blessing humanity. Are the masses as ready 
to pay for the distribution of the thoughts of God? Or are 
any too busy to study those thoughts though freely written? 

It is the part of a worldly wisdom to patronize the 



72 THE BEAUTIFUL. 

expensive luxuries of Art. These outlays are better than for a 
sensual life. Art ennobles the race ; but a knowledge of the 
true God, the truth of God, the word of God, prayer to that 
God, help from that God, — these ennoble souls much more 
than art ; and if the money which should go for promoting 
the truth, goes for art, then art is to be complained of. 

Souls can be wrought into better shape than marble. Man 
is the best ornament of the world. If there are enough 
to encourage and support the artistic poor, those who appre- 
ciate moral beauty may patronize a higher art, which seeks 
to develop the souls of the idle poor, that they too may be 
useful as producers, or adorners. No man has a right to 
live in a tub, or a dungeon, unless it be for crime, or through 
the persecutions that come to the righteous. A man of cheer- 
ful mind must have cheerful surroundings. To some men, 
cheerfulness is possible under all circumstances; but many 
a man, having had long terms in the School of Suffering, 
through his infirmities needs more the comforts and orna- 
ments of life ; and the man has no right to dwell in gloom. 
His surroundings, though of paint or marble, are his min- 
isters: they are his tools, by which he gains strength to 
mark other men, and to develop in them that life, which is 
more beautiful than the choicest creations of the old masters. 
If we teach men to love the Beautiful, it is one step toward 
their loving the Good and the True. But the men that 
need to be elevated, long for the Good and the True, as much 
as for the Beautiful : their passion, their longing for holi- 
ness and truth is stronger than their desire for fine art. As 
a matter of price it is cheaper to teach men directly the 



THE BEST ORNAMEMT. 73 

beauty of holiness; than to teach them indirectly in paint, 
or marble, or in buildings, which are only shadows of the 
ideas they demand. While then, every man may according 
to his own need and circumstances patronise the beautiful 
and expensive arts ; yet no man has a right to forget, that 
the Coolie and the Hottentot are his brothers and it is not 
decent for him, and is not according to the golden rule, for 
him to make a larger outlay of cash and of energy in fur- 
nishing himself with luxuries, than he does in furnishing 
his brothers with the means of moral and physical elevation. 

Man is the best ornament of the world : but alas ! some 
men are not very ornamental. In some quarters, "only man 
is vile." Who will take the material and go to work ? And 
who will furnish board and clothes and tools to the work- 
men ? And who will take the new ornament, and set him up 
in life ? A coarse material results in coarse art. Is marble 
capable of a finer polish than a human soul ? An artist seeks 
a grand ideal. Can the perfect character of the good, the 
beautiful, the true, be wrought best in marble or in a soul ? 
The work of the marble cutter shows stiffness, and leaves 
marks of a bungling hand, surely quite as much as the 
skilled work on souls. The union of beauty and use is the 
noble end of nobler artists. Does the well wrought soul 
afford no use ever rising above its ever rising beauty ? The 
works of fine art perish ; while the works on the pure soul 
increase in depth of color, or power of expression, and 
endure forever. 

Considering the question merely as a matter of influence 
on ourselves, we value the work on souls more than the toil 



74: THE BEST ARTISTS. 

of the fine arts. Let any one train his body for this artist 
work, and he will be all clothed with new graces. Let one 
train his brain to this artist work. " The best study of man- 
kind is man." There is a discipline in the study, day af- 
ter day, on the soul, finding its exact deformity, and the 
exact tool for its removal, and the exact handling of the tool, 
lest more mischief should result from the tool than from the 
deformity itself. Let one train his heart for the artist work, 
filling his soul with the divine ideal, becoming to himself a 
model. Or, if one do not himself become such a soul artist, 
still the patronage of such art has a bearing on one's own 
good. It adorns the community as with the guardians of its 
peace, making property more safe. If one largely patronise 
such art, it renders him liable to get the praise of that good 
name, which is above silver. Or again, the patron of the 
fine work on souls finds the world around him more 
agreeable. With his increased safety in property and in- 
creased good name he better appreciates his neighborhood, 
and therefore himself. 

Considering the question as a matter of duty to our fellow 
men, the decision is, at once, that we owe more outlay to men 
than to marble quarries, or canvass or colors. 

Considering the question as a matter of duty to God, the 
decision at once is that those who work on souls are the only 
true artists, and architects of the world, and heaven applauds 
no other. 

We thus believe Socrates, son of a sculptor, wrought 
better than his father, and that the son of the Kazarene 
carpenter rose above his early trade, in his later hewing and 



TRAVEL. 75 

fitting characters, which, to the wandering tribes of earth 
should be enduring models of beautiful building. The 
glory of the Sphinx, Apollo, Venus, or the Greek Slave, do 
not appear to so good advantage, in the eyes of the Eternal, 
as the long rows of statuary he has already received from his 
soul artists on the earth. I am wealthy if I own pieces from 
the best masters of marble or of colors; but I am more 
wealthy if I have employed one of the divine artists to work 
on the soul of a man, shaping him from the rough, till the 
purity of his character changes all the dangers of his situa- 
tion into a means of defence, as Una was blest by the lion she 
feared. Such a statue would be worth making and paying 
for. 

A heavy patronage of the fine arts may prove a serious 
diversion of gold, which could be otherwise spent with 
greater advantage to the race. 

It is a part of the patronage of fine arts, and partly the 
patronage of a curious and idle life, to expend much money in 
foreign travel. Any complaint against this must be 
grounded on the notion that money is thus used, which might 
bs spent for the better good of the race, and that the diversion is 
a mischief. It is estimated that each year, American sight 
seers spend from thirty to forty five million dollars in Eu- 
rope. Any person whose whole life is a sacrifice to Christ and 
man, may well travel both to find recreation, and to discover 
and relieve the wants of the race: yet the grand recreation is 
found in the spiritual wonders opening ; and one who con- 
tributes the means of spiritual reform, finds more recreation 
in the result than he can find in storied piles of architecture. 



76 RUINS. 

Baalbec, the Greek ruins, the Coliseum, or old feudal cas- 
tles do not afford so grand a sight as the decay of old customs 
of sin or the fall of old prejudices without a veil to hide 
their nakedness. The painted windows of Lincoln cathe- 
dral, St. Peters, and the Vatican are not so beautiful as 
three manly souls, all built and adorned for God's worship. 
It may be a fine sight to gaze on the arch- ways and bridges 
of Prague, of London, or of Paris, or the Napoleonic arch ; 
yet if a whole nation, or even a small savage tribe have long 
presented barriers to the progress of humanity, is it not a work 
of beauty and of surpassing skill to throw over that tribe a pas- 
sage way, or build an arch of triumph over their wildness? 
Or even if a single man have running in his soul an unlaw- 
ful passion, which is cutting its channel deep and deeper, 
and there can be laid over it some principle which shall rob 
it of its force and make it passable, it is a work as wor- 
thy to be gazed on as any pile of masonry. Or yet if there 
is a glory in building mills on any river, there may be a 
greater glory in turning the stream of a nation's force, or the 
force of a single man, to the working of the strong mills 
of God. The soul of man is better than the spinning of cot- 
ton. Pyramids are not so grand as the solidity of one soul so 
built and settled that its reputation can never be washed or 
marred by the storms of present or after ages. Shall one 
go and see the Egyptian stones, or, take the cost and time 
of his journey and devote it to the culture of some soul, and 
build up a man more noble than any pyramid? 

Kings and Emperors may build their own memorials, or 
adorn park and palace. Piich men build fine houses and 






MEANS OF GRACE. / i 

vote money for public adorning. It is all well. They are 
goodly servants. Yet there is at this stage of the world a 
better business for those who can understand the worth of 
souls. The world ought to be full of beauty created by 
man imitating the course of the insects, birds and of the 
world itself; but it is not the time to spend money thus 
while the mass of men are yet ignorant of the more sub- 
stantial culture which comes through the knowledge of the 
true God, which can be diffused at a cost very slight com- 
pared with the cost of that material splendor, which ha 3 
a less ennobling influence. When the populations are 
lifted to the knowledge of God's character, they will give 
themselves to the cultivation of the aesthetic taste, but till 
they know God, the money which is spent to gratify aesthetic 
taste is diverted from the best channel of good to men and 
is therefore a mischief the race may well complain of. 

The cost of one voyage to Europe, or one "season" 
at the mountains or by the sea, might give the knowl- 
edge of life to many now ignorant, and might give them a 
free title to travel in heaven. The mountains and the sea, 
are "means of grace," yet in attending on them we should 
remember the graceless multitudes, who dwell by distant 
mountains and across wild seas, and give them an oppor- 
tunity to know of God's grace. While we expensively wan- 
der, they are ready to perish. 

There is a compensation to those who stay at home, thit 
by their self denial and liberality the houseless heath: > 
may find a home in heaven. It is possible to have an inf- 
late companionship with the Creator himself, bracing IV: 



7 b A BETTER WORLD TO TRAVEL IN. 

spirit more than all mountains and all seas. It is also 
possible that on the morrow one may go up to the celestial 
city, climb the hills or walk in the vales and see the ancient 
dwellings of Paradise, visit God's school of design, hear the 
bells that rung for the earliest sons of God, hear the well 
worn harps, talk with priests who were aged when the earth 
was without form, and with them worship in the cathedrals 
of heaven, and then for a daily recreation either see things 
more wonderful than the best earthly sights, or see other 
things which may be of more worth to the individual soul in 
that time and in that place. 

Much of the money spent in travel could be spent better. 
Its misuse is a mischief to the race. It may be a mischief 
to the individual spending it, diverting his mind from no- 
bler sights God gives, and from the prospects which open in 
the world we shall so soon travel in. 



In summing up the expense for direct selfishness, or the 
money which is diverted from the noblest use to meaner 
channels of good to men, and in counting the complaint 
that may rise from the race on their account, we find a heavy 
charge lying against the continent of Europe, and against 
England : while all the rest of the world is acknowledged 
to be so guilty as to admit of no discussion of the point. 

In our own country, we find money laid out more liberally 
in Satanic adventures than for missions ; more paid for poli- 
tics than for the gospel of God; the costly vices of appe- 



REGULAR STANDING. 79 

tite better patronized than the needs of heathen souls. Our 
houses are built strongly for ourselves, while human souls 
both here and across the waves wander houseless. We clothe 
ourselves and leave our brothers' souls naked. We care for 
our dogs and horses, and are content that our brothers in 
Adam shall fare worse ; we feed to the full and neglect the 
hungry; the people praise any writing which bolsters up 
their sin, and in the patronage of fine arts, or the amuse- 
ment of travel forget the arts that adorn the soul, and forget 
that we journey toward a better country. 

Many of these uses of money are of high good and ought 
to be patronized, but the complaint is that there is not a 
corresponding outlay for the nobler needs of men. 

These facts are not pertinent to the church alone, but to 
the world. The fact that a few men, for example one eighth 
of ourAmerican population, have consecrated themselves to 
God, does not allow the rest of the country to throw on them 
all the responsibility of beneficence, the obligation to which is 
founded in the fact of common brotherhood. It is no more 
true that a church member is brother to an Indian idolater 
and thief, than it is true that some low bred politician is 
his brother also. The obligation rests on the wealthy politi- 
cal gambler, in virtue of his relationship to the race, to do 
good to his brothers in India, as much as the obligation rests 
on some orthodox man of ''regular standing." If any re- 
proach is to be cast, on account of excessive spending for 
self, it should be cast on all, not all charged upon the 
"brethren." The whole structure of society is, such that 
expensive business, or love of passion, or love of creature 



80 SODOM. 

comfort, love of admiration, outside adorning, or the claims 
of some sickly sentimental "benevolence, or false taste carry 
off the mass of American money, while the profoundest 
needs of the common race are unheeded, and those societies, 
which by help of the merest pittance supply those needs are 
yet cramped by the narrowness of their operations, or groan 
under debt and under the wordy "blows" of a complaining 
constituency. If there be any shame in such a case, it is 
to be divided to each man in the country, not portioned out 
to the church. If all belong to the same race with Asiatic, 
Oceanic or Afric heathen, the obligation is on all to give help, 
and the shame is on all neglectors. But who cares for shame 
so long as the mind can be occupied with ready dividends, 
or the calls of passion, or the sleep of ease, and vicious notions 
of taste and finery which perchance may elevate the human 
race, and thus place the patrons of such stuff on the list of 
benefactors ! 

Since the strength of Samson and the beauty of Absa- 
lom were in glossy locks, let countless men and countless 
women spend the chief force of an empty life in tonsorial 
operations. 

Jezebel ws a painted woman of fashion ; let then the sole 
force of American character be bestowed on such forms. 

Sodom was rich as a garden, let then all America take 
pride in a riotous life. 

Health demands less luxury. 

The spirit is ungirt by luxury. 

Luxury makes that heart rebellious which was loyal in 
poverty. 



MEXICAN LAW. 81 

Jeshuran kicks against the one who fed and fattened him. 

Yet it is stale to repeat old tales that luxury ruined Persia, 
Macedonia, and Eome; that even Sparta was subject to 
bribes to be spent in indulgence; that Athens at last 
built a monument for a successful public beggar, equal in 
glory to the one made for the great Demosthenes, and that 
the new funds were wasted, as the old, — in luxury. If 
ancient warriors would break the spirit of a people, it was by 
compelling them to a luxurious life. Conquering armies 
lost their power in the luxurious living brought by the vic- 
tory. Over taxation, necessitated by luxury, precipitated the 
Gauls on Eome, in the time of Clovis. The great French 
revolution was induced by riotous living, quite as much as 
by free thinking. How justly then the ancient Mexicans 
punished prodigals with death. 

Who then are they who claim an escape for us? It is 
claimed that a peculiarity is found, to brace our civilization 
in the inventions of a boasted age, which lifts the masses to an 
enduring power ! It may be claimed that the idea of a com- 
mon brotherhood, in no age so prevalent as now, has a con- 
serving power in it. But the question is, shall this idea 
prevail, reform, and conserve, or shall it fail before the hand 
of a luxurious and busy life. 

Lazarus lived on crumbs. 

The woman of Syrophenicia only asked for crumbs. 

The very crumbs falling from our tables, if fed to our dy- 
ing brothers, will sustain them till we learn a more 
glorious life, and they a more generous strength, and support 
themselves. 



82 NO MORE SEA. 

The fact is that the crumbs of the mass of the nation are 
now withholden. The question is, Shall they he given ? 
The great rebellion, cutting off luxuries, may teach a whole- 
some lesson. There are very few who hoard money. There 
are very many who waste it. The miser deprives the 
race of little. The spendthrift deprives the race of much. 
What though his spending make work and the means of 
livelihood, the chief amount could have been so spent, as to 
make better work and a better living to the needy, and fur- 
nish them the means of making a better spiritual work. 

It were better to be clothed in sackcloth than in silks, 
while the world is shivering. 

To spend for vice, or ease, or pride, is just as selfish as to 
hoard silver. It is as base to spend money in needless acqui- 
sition as to lay up money never to be used during a miser's 
life time. The tendency of luxury and of covetousness are 
the same, to make self the God of the world, while fellow 
men on the earth and the God of Heaven are kept out of 
mind. The luxurious life is worse than miserliness in so 
much as it is the source of more mischief to the race. 

To conquer appetite and passion needs to be preached to 
the men of luxury, more than giving to the covetous. Who- 
ever may at last shatter this image, which the nations wor- 
ship, will find untold treasurers roll out for better use. But 
to day, the expenses of the world in luxuries roll as an ocean 
with maddening storm and deafening roar; though the glo- 
rious sun may draw a few drops here and there to a higher ser- 
vice, and scatter them in swift clouds of mercy, yet the mass 
re mains salt and desolate. When shall there be no more sea ? 



GOD COMES TO THE RESCUE. 



In the existence of the evil of selfishness and as a natural 
means of counteracting and removing it, God has set up his 
church on the foundation of the Unselfish Life. But the 
church is chosen out of the world, and bears in its bosom 
the imperfections of humanity. Eegeneration is not sanctifi- 
cation, and sanctification is not the work of an instant. 
The reasons for which God permits gigantic sins in the 
world, may induce Him to tolerate some sins dwarfed in the 
church. Therefore the sins of the world are for a time the 
sins of the church ; and if coveting be the chief sin of the 
world, it will be the chief sin of the church. Yet these 
sins creeping into the church are like trees transplanted from 
their native soil to one which gives them no nourishment ; 
and though the hardy things long refuse to die, and lift their 
blackened trunks and stretch out their sapless boughs long 
after they are dead, yet they are not like the rank shrubs 
of the poison marsh. 

A fable of the ancient church tells us that persecuted 
christians, who by a miracle slept two hundred years, waked 
to find all the world christian and all the church worldly, 
so that they feared the new church more than they did the 
old heathen. The story is often commended to modern 
notice; but the church is not to be complained of. Man 
is man, not God, nor yet an angel. Human character must 



Ob THE CHURCH. 

be judged by a human standard. The highest standard of 
human benevolence has many obstacles in the way of its 
attainment. Step by step men rise to the Unselfish Life. 
Little by little, God has lifted the fallen race, and, little by 
little, they do the deeds worthy His servants and his sons. 

There has been no age of the world so full of benevolent, 
Godlike enterprise as the present. It is an age of christian 
activity. Gold is running to and fro in the earth more than 
in any previous generation, and more of this is used for 
Christ than ever before. Almost every church has heavy 
contributions, numerous because small ; the tax is large, and 
the begging is continual. Yet in spite of financial difficul- 
ties, holy men have continually increased the funds of the 
Lord's treasury. In no age has there been so much self 
denial for Christ. Instead of wondering that men do little, 
we may praise the God of wonders that men do so much. 
Yet God is always urging upon us the needs of the needy, 
and the high standard of benevolence thus divinely urged, 
being humanly attained to, will bring us back to the obedi- 
ence and joy of Eden. 

The reason men complain of the deformity of the church 
is that they can see only her deformity. Men's eyes are 
depraved and they look at the bad more naturally, more 
keenly, more appreciatingly than at the good. 

Doth Job fear God for naught ? Hast thou not made an 
hedge about him and about all that he hath on every side ? 

Take away the hedge and he will curse as other men. 

So do men pervert judgment. If one hypocrite be found 
their logic concludes the whole church to be corrupt. On 






BLACK YET COMELY. 87 

the contrary, however, it is one of the strong proofs of the 
divine origin of Christianity, that the church has had 
strength to drag with it through the centuries the body of 
spiritual death thus linked to it. No weak, false spirituality 
could thus have kept the ascendency over the powers of evil. 

The true church is yet comely, though black from her 
toil in others' vineyards. 

Neither is the world competent to judge the church. 
As well might the crab apple judge the orange tree. They 
work on different principles. While the one seeks to con- 
vert all to acidity, the other seeks to convert all to sweetness. 
One ignorant of the higher life cannot understand another's 
aspirations and endeavors after it, and cannot have charity for 
his missteps and downfalls. Surely they who comprehend 
the glory of the aim can see that such an one is nobler in 
his stumbling than he who never tried to rise ; they say for 
him the undaunted words, "Kejoice not against me, mine 
enemy: when I fall, I shall arise ! " 

Deformities of character mar the church more than the 
world, for the church represents the high ideal of harmony 
and proportion and perfection of beauty. Though the 
whole world be barren as a dead forest, it is all unnoticed, 
for we expect no good of the world; and the world looks 
into the church as such a forest gazes into the lakelet in its 
bosom, by virtue of whose very purity and crystal clearness 
it sees mirrored its own ugliness. The homeliness of the 
church in the eyes of the world is only the reflection the 
world sees of itself. 

From the beginning, there has been a mixed multitude in 



88 THE MIXED MULTITUDE. 

Israel ; crying out for the flesh pots of Egypt in time of 
peace; sleeping safe under some fair shelter in the time of 
battle ; deserting with rich booty in time of defeat, or plun- 
dering the dead, like thieving Achan, in time of victory. 
These, surely, are no loyal soldiers. Yet God has not given 
the church these thorns in her sides that she may cry out 
in continual complaint. Let us rather regard them as the 
alloy essential to the melting of the gold. They are the 
ciphers in God's arithmetic, without which the problem 
of the church would fail. Let them promote the develop- 
ment of a patient, prayerful life, a life of loving labor for 
the erring; even like the life of that Christ who in the hour 
of the betrayal called Judas "friend," and whose meek re- 
proach was only this: "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with 
a kiss? " How much more then shall we be patient with our 
brethren, "forbearing one another in love?" 



COVETOUSNESS IN THE CHURCH. 



S* 



The plan in the creation was for God to be the grand 
foundation ; man, the image of God, the building on it ; and 
self the small top of the pyramid, lifted up into the heavens. 
Do christian souls reverse the work, — make self the broad 
base, man the narrower superstructure and God the small 
top of the pile hid away among the clouds of heaven ? This, 
alas, is the reversed plan of the Divine architect, on which 
human builders have wrought since the fall. Thus point- 
ing right, yet building wrong, the character of man has 
failed of its highest sublimity. 

This was the fatal error of God's ancient people whose 
history early and late is one of covetousness, till now the 
name of Jew is the sign of the basest usury. 

As Enoch and Noah had stood each alone for God in their 
covetous generations, so stood Abraham alone when Lot, one 
half the church, pitched his tent towards Sodom. 

For a little pottage Esau sold his birth right and the 
fathership of the Messiah ; and the subtle Jacob was always 
ready for some such trade. 

As we approach the nationality of Israel, we find the cov- 
etous Balaam appear with a spirit of cursing against the 
people : and it appears that the curse of his own covetous- 
ness fell upon them. 



92 THE OLD CHURCH. 

From worshiping a golden calf in the wilderness, the pil- 
grims came into the Land of Promise, and there were shamed 
by defeat because of one among them who, having whetted 
his desire by the spoils of Heshbon and En-gedi, during all 
the solemn march around the cursed city, for the seven days 
thought not of God's glory, but only of plundering God. 
The miserly man would hide gold in the midst of his tent, 
though the innocent feet that might play over it should walk 
no more in Israel. " Joshua," says Father Ambrose, " could 
stop the course of the sun, but all his power could not stop 
the course of avarice. The sun stood still, but avarice went 
on. Joshua obtained a victory when the sun stood still, but 
when avarice was at work Joshua was defeated." 

Even Gideon, the man of one fault, was ensnared by gold. 

The sons of Samuel turned aside for lucre. 

Israel's first king covetingly kept the cattle of an enemy 
for sacrifice, and saved his own herds for feasting. 

To remind him of the fallen people, God's favorite proph- 
et had for his continual companion a man who seeing not 
the golden chariots of heaven that surrounded his master, 
yet had an eager eye for the gold borne in the chariots of 
a Syrian leper. 

In God's greatest victory over the foes of Israel, there 
were loathsome thieves, who, busy in concealing treasure 
stolen from the deserted camp of the enemy, only returned 
to tell the fainting city, because they feared some evil to 
themselves. 

In the time of the prophets were many to swallow up the 
needy and make the poor of the land to fail ; wishing the 



THE NEW CHURCH. 



93 



new moon and the Sabbath past, that they might "sell re- 
fuse wheat" with measure small and price great, "buying 
the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes." 

Christ came in due time and restored the pattern of a 
perfect life ; but to the blunted perceptions and perverted 
taste of the age in which he lived, it had no form nor 
comeliness. A few indeed saw the beauty of his holy and 
self denying life, and called him Master and followed in his 
footsteps ; and to their praise will it forever stand on the 
heavenly record, that the Son of God on earth was not utterly 
unappreciated nor utterly misunderstood. No men ever 
lived who added such glory to humanity. The vast and 
imposing array of poets and sages, prophets and kings 
throughout the world's whole history have not added such 
nobleness to our race as did the humble friends of the way- 
faring Christ, in that they were his friends. For this was 
an age when men bound heavy burdens and laid them on 
other men's shoulders. This self seeking age would not 
know a self denying Eedeemer. It is the one saving feature 
of such an age that there were in it a handful of men who 
dared be Christ's disciples. 

Yet even in this chosen land, in the very family of Christ, 
sprang up the old curse of covetousness, as if no precinct 
could be too sacred for its entrance. Judas had been long 
prophesied of, as if he would make a great figure in the 
church as a real bargainer. 

And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price : 
and if not, forbear, so they weighed for my price thirty pieces 
of silver. 



94 WHAT WILL YE GIVE ME? 

This Judas was the man with the bag, doubtless the best 
financier in the band, good at getting and very discreet 
about giving. He it was who exclaimed, as Christ was 
anointed for his burial, "Why was this waste of ointment 
made ? It might have been sold for three hundred pence 
and given to the poor." 

Not because he cared for the poor but because he had the 
bag and bare what was put therein. 

When Judas went out to the betrayal, the disciples 
thought he had gone to buy something for the poor : but 
that bag of theirs which he carried off, they never saw again. 
The man's actual trade was not so shrewd as the prophecy of 
him would indicate. Bather than "Give me my price," it 
was as if he were necessitated; " What will ye give me?" 
Willing to do it at almost any price. They were glad, 
and covenanted to give him fourteen dollars and thir- 
ty five cents. Judas having done the grand deed of his life, 
now prepared for death, made his will, leaving the price of 
blood at the feet of the chief priests. Their nice sense of 
the fitness of things kept the money from God's treasury 
and went to buy a graveyard. This purchase money of 
Christ was demoted to charity. Judas went "to his own 
place" with the sentence upon him that it were better for 
him had he never been born. 

There are many apologies for the character of Judas, as 
if he were only desirous of more speedily bringing the 
Kingdom to the timid Christ. These apologies are but the 
false coloring of a covetous generation. God regards the 



THE RIGHT TO SIN. 95 

intent of the heart. He weighed the intent of Judas, and in 
the doom was God's "biography of the motives and the man. 

A few years later in the same church and country, lived 
one Ananias who attempted to defraud the Holy Ghost. The 
same age produced a magician who thought to buy the divine 
power for his own service. 

Two hundred years after Christ, Cyprian writes thus: 
''Every one devotes himself to increasing his worldly sub- 
stance, and forgets what the faithful did during the times 
of the apostles and what should he always done. Chris- 
tians cherish an insatiable desire of augmenting their for- 
tunes." 

This covetous life sprung all afresh, as a mushroom, in 
the night of the church. Mediaeval priests outdid the sins 
of all priests and people who went before them, selling the 
right to sin and the right to heaven, Well may those be 
called the Dark Ages, which witnessed so fearful a deser- 
tion from the army of the Lord of Light to the hosts of 
Mammon. According to a Eoman Catholic writer, in the 
space of about one hundred and fifty years, in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, one thousand million dollars were 
bestowed by the Pope on personal friends. The same writer 
condemns this shameless rapacity, as the devouring of money 
enough to uproot all the heresies of the world ! 



In this the ripest age of the Church, while twelve hun- 
dred millions of the world are seeking only the bread which 



96 THE COMMERCIAL THEORY. 

perishes, the ninety millions in Protestant lands do a large 
share in the same service. Of the twelve million church- 
members even, how few esteem the heavenly riches more 
than the toys of earth ! 

What is the Census of those whose only knowledge of 
Theology is summed up in the "commercial theory" of the 
Atonement; who only understand a bargain, and whose 
practical religion is based on the idea that somehow God is 
to be their " exceeding great reward ! " These men are very 
broad towards earth and very narrow towards heaven. 

Many rise early and sit up late to do business, crowding 
from their days and nights all opportunity of spiritual 
gains ; worrying their laborers with long hours, never urg- 
ing them to be busy to gain the bread of heaven ; and of 
their worldly gain, how much goes to Mammon and how lit- 
tle to Christ ! The oldest preachers found occasion for the 
caution, that the "providing for one's own house "means 
only food and clothing for a day and not for centuries. An 
apostolic exhortation to the indolent has become the watch- 
word of the covetous church in all ages ! If one is cumber- 
ed with much serving, it is easy to keep away from the feet 
of Christ. The cares of the world and deceitfulness of rich- 
es are thorns in the narrow way. A farm or merchandise 
may excuse from heavenly feastings. 

The struggle for wealth oftener fosters the spirit of cov- 
etousness than of christian benevolence. What we strive 
hardest for, we value most when gained. Men who have 
spent their best days and their best thoughts in the steady, 
ant like toil to heap up a fortune, receiving their money in 



A CHARITY SERMON. 97 

small coins, bestow it in the same way. They may he the 
professed friends of Christ; but the little mote of wealth, 
held so long close to the eye, has at length grown large 
enough to conceal the whole dying world without. Are they 
stewards of God ? They, like Lycurgus, give little that they 
may have the more left to give. Even as the ruler of 
Macedon, they are always " about to do " some good action. 
Words are cheap, and a tithe of words may go well in prayer 
or profession. It is easy to say that all belongs to God. The 
forms of some christian graces cost no money. It was easy 
for a kingly warrior to use one hand in writing orders for 
prayers and processions for the release of the pope, while his 
other hand held the key which held the pope fast, till the 
proud prisoner would make a treaty glorious to his jailor. 
It is easy to pray that the oppressed go free, then rise from 
the knees and use the lash. "Words oftentimes are like 
counterfeit coin, fair representatives of solid deeds, but 
worthless to him who receives them. 

Some Sabbath, the man of " small means" goes to church to 
hear a Charity Sermon. The minister evidently tries to 
be a litie sarcastic ; advises his hearers to be zealous ; tells 
them that the old Nestorians are far ahead of us, for they 
make a frequent habit of stopping in the midst of a prayer 
to make a bargain, then go on again. He reads of the sharp 
young man, who broke in upon the discourse of Christ to ask 
for a division of property. The preacher commends the 
nine lepers whom Christ cleansed, and who did not return 
thanks ; he thinks that they went off to trade. He then 
reads Herder's Epigram on the one talent, — how the man 



yo THE NAPKIN. 

carefully unwrapped his napkin, took out the talent and 
said, "There Lord, take, this is thine;" then folding up 
the napkin carefully kept it, saying "Lord, this is mine." 
The preacher repeats the old intimation, that the "blood 
of the Pilgrims in our veins is sopped up with bank notes." 
In the end he declares how wealth fortifies the soul, making 
it impregnable to the appeals of charity; taking in all shots, 
as into mud walls ; or makes a morass in the soul to receive 
the hot missels. He then advises any man who may chance 
to madden a people by preaching on "giving," to turn his 
tack and preach on " getting," and the same men will hear 
and applaud forever. 

Now the hearer of this discourse thinks these men were 
very shrewd, the advice good, — about the best charity ser- 
mon he ever heard, and thinks he must " do something." He 
does not stop long to make his Father's house a house of 
merchandize, "calculating" on the collection, for he knows 
just how much to give, according to the rule about tithing 
the mint and the rue. He yields up his talent, replaces the 
napkin, gracefully bows to the minister, who goes out of 
the church muttering, "Alexander, the Coppersmith, did 
me much evil." 

The next day, the force of the minister rallies, and he sends 
the collector to the house of him of one talent. The one 
who obtained no usury for his Lord sits reading thus, in the 
correspondence of his morning paper :« — 

A Dismal Profession. — A letter writer says : "In Am- 
sterdam I saw a queer looking fellow walking around, dressed 
in black, with a cocked hat on his head from which crape 



THE DEATH ANNOUNCER. 99 

dangled to his heels, with short breeches, knee "buckles and 
black stockings, and a short black cloak from the collar of 
which another roll of crape hung down to.the ground. Upon 
inquiry, I discovered that he was a Death Announcer." 

Just then the good Deacon knocks at his door. The rap is to 
the pale reader, as that of the Death Announcer. He tries to 
drive him off. But the deacon, an old Californian, is able to 
" stand the pressure." The spade, the pick, the powder, 
each do their work ; and he gets at last one fine grain of 
gold, as a smitten rock suddenly yields its silver jet to the 
famished traveler. 

The generous soul then returns to his ease, and reads in 
his evening paper, about bees getting honey from poison 
flowers, — the force of which he does not see. Then there is 
a poem, of an Arctic soul with a little light kindled in it, 
as on an iceberg; it gleamed as the aurora, in varying 
form of showy, fitful beneficence: yet no goodly growth 
could spring under that frigid fire. Then he reads a very 
pretty story about Persian dervises, who come with their 
tents, and sit down before a rich man's door, sprinkle a little 
sacred barley about, cry out the name of Jehovah, and wait 
there, it may be for months, till the rich man comes out and 
gives them cash, then they are off. " Ah !" says this story 
reader, " that was the way I got rid of the deacon !" Then he 
goes to his sleep, forgetting to pray for the coming of the 
kingdom, forgetting to pray for the success of his little 
charity ; so he shortly dreams that the money he gave went 
to buy some brute from whose death there could be no resur- 
rection. His charity fell to the ground. Yet even this 



100 BRAZEN CANDLESTICKS. 

prayerless gift comforts his mind, and he dreams again of 
seeing Christ walking among his churches, as among seven 
golden candlesticks, only in his dream they seemed as 
brazen candlesticks. 



It is sometimes asked how so many children of Mammon 
get into the church of Christ? The answer is that the 
pastors may he indiscreet, or hasty, or urgent; or men do not 
always know themselves ; or their passions wake "by change 
of circumstances. The deceits of Satan abound. Men be- 
gin to rear a property, with an honorable esteem of the uses 
of property ; but, by and by, it so overpoweringly twines about 
them that it crushes out the thoughts of better things, as 
trees in the tropics are choked by the vines they have reared. 
Again, those who trust in riches come often into the church 
by design. 

For with their mouth they show much love, but their heart 
goeth after their covetousness. 

They ask with Job, "What advantage will it be unto me 
if I be cleansed from my sin? " 

If a man, by giving one thousand dollars for a good name, 
may gain five thousand dollars by it, it is an inducement to 
seek the good name of a "Christian." Instead of using 
their goods for increasing the church, they use the church 
for increasing their goods. 

If men pray and hear the truth for hire, they will rarely 
be found stirring one another to high thoughts. ^Professedly 



FROGS. 101 

journeying to the King's court, they are found among the 
pilgrims one day in seven, then journey six days with the 
forgetters of God. 

In the words of the minister of Northampton, They fall 
not only by the first Adam, hut they also fall by the second 
Adam. 

Christ becomes as a stumbling block to them. 

Jeremy Taylor says, that Frogs in the river Borborus 
get their heads above the slime, while the rest of the body 
is hid in the mud ; and, under a blazing sun, the little moiety 
of a creature dies before it may be said to live. These, he 
compares to those professed christians, who do all they think 
absolutely necessary, but no more. They do but peep into 
the light of the Sun of Kighteousness ; they have the begin- 
nings of life, but their passions and affections, the desires 
of the lower man, are yet unrenewed by its beams. 

Yet we must consider what might have been their case, had 
the Holy Ghost never visited them ; and we look forward to 
their future glory, honor and immortality, though some of 
them do but limp into the eternal life, dwarfed and lamed 
by the shackles of wealth. 

As in ledges we find veins of different rock, so in most 
men's composition there is an interpolation of some curious 
streak, as a vein in his rocky depravity. God's storm and 
sun wear off the mass of his rockiness, but often this vein 
remains a firm and prominent ridge, which can be torn away 
only by violence. In one it may be anger, and to subdue 
this is his cross. In another it is love of money, the re- 
spectable sin which many yield to, who would scorn the 

9* 



102 NO SIN. 

enslaving of other passions. To tear away this passion for 
gold is his cross. 

If the Spartans thought theft no sin, they might, if con- 
verted, for a long time have indulged in it, till they were 
convinced that it was a sin. 

Of old, men thought drunkenness no sin: and when men 
were converted they did not leave off the ordinary drinking 
any more than the ordinary eating. The Temperance Be- 
form was a gradual movement and urged on "by mighty effort. 

For a long time Slavery was tolerated as a light sin. There 
are not wanting now those who hear the christian name, yet 
tolerate it. They have never been "convicted" of that sin 
and must he labored for and prayed for till "converted," 

Covetousness is the sin least suspected by those who in- 
dulge it. Men do not know they have it. When converted 
they do not think of it, having never been convicted of it. 
Aware that coveting is sin, they yet have a wroug idea of 
what it is to covet, and think themselves free from it. Or 
else, comparing themselves among themselves, they judge 
their own sins small, and other men's great. 

This is one reason why the late revivals have not brought 
in more money for charity ; men have not been convicted of 
covetousness, and therefore cling to it, exactly as men have 
clung to strong drink and slaveholding, thinking themselves 
guiltless. 

It is not hard to convince men that drunkenness is a 
sin, but it is hard to convince men that moderate drink- 
ing, the temptation to drunkenness, is a sin. So with cov- 
etousness. All believe the rank miser and spendthrift are 






A TERRIBLE SHADOW. 103 

sinners, but it is hard to make men believe that the various 
preliminaries to miserliness or proflicacy are also sinful. 

Now covetousness is the grand sin of the world. Its 
poisonous roots spread wide in every heart. If suffered to 
grow, it "becomes deadly ; casting its terrible shadow over af- 
fection, faith and duty, and they wither away, — and the 
garden of the heart is left desolate. Charity has no growth 
in such a heart. The restraining of a man's wealth from God 
is only a symbol of his other withholdings. He withholds 
from the cause of Christ his love, his care for the poor* 
his personal efforts for the coming of the kingdom of right- 
eousness. Benevolence and philanthropy abide not with 
the spirit of covetousness. Christian love and Christian 
joy are yet strangers to the heart of him who has not giv- 
en up all to Christ. 

Yet so presumptuous, oftentimes, is this spirit of covetous- 
ness in man, that it would lay hold of the heavenly riches 
with one hand and the treasures of earth with the other. 
It sees a certain value in that "treasure which faileth not," 
and cannot bear that anything of value should escape it. 
To those who seek Him in this spirit, Christ ever gives the 
command, "Sell that thou hast and give to the poor;" "Ye 
cannot serve God and Mammon;" and like the young man 
in the scripture, they turn away sorrowfully from the prom- 
ised treasure to their "great possessions." Or perhaps, 
instead of going direct to Christ to seek salvation they go to 
the Church, which makes no such hard requisition as was 
that of Christ: therefore they enter, making no sacrifices, 
flattering themselves that they are in the fold, though they 



104 NOT A RAG OR A CRUMB. 

came not in "by Christ the door ; forgetting the words of the 
Shepherd of souls, — "He that entereth not in "by the door, but 
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." 

We have heard it suggested as a fitting question to be 
asked on admission to the church, — "Has you piety got in- 
to your hands and your feet?" 

The mass of the heathen die in the ease of sin, or only 
follow a lusting prophet; yet many a heathen, for fame, or 
for relief of heart, has given large charities. What shall we 
say of men in Christian churches whom no fame, no im- 
pulse, no principle, no steadfast and systematic argument 
can move to give a trifle to their neighborly poor, to remove 
glaring evils from their door, or to send, the religion of 
Christ to the distant dying? 

Was there no reason for that minister to blush, who had 
to use all argument, and persuasion, and entreaty in engag- 
ing the members of his church, — not to renounce fortune, 
to sacrifice life, to be accursed for their brethren's sake, to 
perform some rare and heroic deed, — but to get for the poor 
a rag or crumb of the profuse offering daily made to the 
world? Verily, that preacher may well question, Do 
hearts set on better treasures, do the citizens of heaven, 
need such stirring on earth ? Will they not, when they en- 
ter on their heavenly inheritance, shame the angels, and put 
Faradise in disarray? 

A cold morality is not a warm piety. A profession of 
love is not a passion of love. The visible Church is not the 
invisible. 

In this matter, let every man look well to the rooting 



THE SERPENT'S SEED. 105 

out of the evil in himself. "Let the Serpent's seed go 
on their belly and eat the dust of this earth: "but let 
the members of Christ be ashamed to bow down and feed 
with them." Let such as will, live in the bogs, in the flats, 
breathing the unhealthy miasm of selfishness. Christians 
should dwell on those summits of benevolence which over- 
look the world, — where the breezes are as the voice of God. 



LUXUKIOUS LIFE IN THE CHURCH. 



The selfish life in the Church, as in the world, is manifest 
not so much by acccumulating as by spendfulnesp. 

Man loves flowers, and every church should be full of 
them. Flowers of architecture, and splendid ceremonies are 
pleasing. Our God has made every thing beautiful in his 
time. Heaven is a world of beauty. Mount Zion is beau- 
tiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. 

But there is no ornament like that of a meek and quiet 
spirit. " Wisdom is better than fine gold and precious stones. 
Character is more admirable than clay. Material splendor 
cannot equal spiritual worth. 

However wise then, and pleasing it may be to have expen- 
sive gospel ministrations and costly church buildings, it is 
more wise and pleasing to build up to manly beauty the 
fallen, the decayed humanity. So long as the temple Man 
lies ruined, so long it is bad economy and in bad taste to 
spend more on masonry than on missions. Yet a church 
edifice has been recently erected at a cost of nearly a quar- 
ter of a million dollars, being more than the whole denomi- 
nation, to which it belongs, gave to missions for a year. 

The Lord filled men with wisdom of heart to work all 
manner of work, and to devise curious works for his praise. 
His worship demands great cost. The Lord is to be wor- 
shiped in the beauty of holiness. But the worship is to be 



110 SPLENDID CHURCHES 

in the beauty of holiness, not in the holiness of beauty. 
That holiness — wholeness of character, which loves all being 
in proportion to its worth; that holiness which seeks the 
good of all beings; that holiness which consists in an Un- 
selfish Life, — that holiness itself gives beauty and is not 
much adorned by the daubing, blundering work of human 
artificers. 

Christ did not come to the earth to teach architecture, 
sculpture, painting, or poetic preaching. His teachings in- 
cidentally show that he appreciated and loved the beautiful, 
but there was a solemn earnestness in his life which was 
unappreciated by those who had stalls and monied seats in 
the splendid temple. Christ said the stones that sheltered 
such impiety should fall, — and they did ; the golden furni- 
ture was scattered among the heathen. 

During the greater part of the period of the church his- 
tory, the best men in the church have wandered about in 
sheep skins and goat skins; worshiping in deserts, or in 
mountains, or in dens and caves of the earth. 

Many heathen have been attracted to a nominal Christian- 
ity by the majestic porches, lofty columns, vaulted roofs, 
gilded altars of covetous and luxurious ''Vicars of Christ." 
An architect, — to build a stone church after the manner of 
Eome, — has been an efficient missionary to many besides 
Xaitam King of Picts. But that Church, which clothed 
statuary, while the faithful went ragged and walked in 
blindness of mind, — that Church set an example, now well 
followed, of getting the money needful for spendor, often 
by foul practices. The tendency of fine church building 






HOW BUILT. Ill 

may be to divert the mind from spiritual realities ; allow 
the mind to rest in a semblance of worship, substitute form 
for faith and corrupt the Church with the sins of greed. 

Our Savior was born in the humblest of buildings. The 
Eeformation was preached in the humblest of buildings. 
Yet those christian sects, which were once famous for their 
simple habits have now gone far in building Cathedrals, 
though they still call them " Chapels. " 

To preach the gospel to the poor is a precious ointment, 
pleasing to the dying Christ. 

It is not " so mean" to worship God in a modest meeting 
house, as it is to let the heathen die without the gospel. 

Eoyal churches are as little for the use of the masses as 
royal palaces. Christian zeal, that will spend the cost of a 
palace in cheering the hearts of the poor, is a more efficient 
magnet than a fine building, in drawing the masses to wor- 
ship. A fine exhibition of christian zeal, and a wide awake 
church transform a very humble house into one of the many 
mansions of Christ. It is better to talk of Christ than of 
" our church." A bold policy is needed. It is an enemy's re- 
proach that splendor is necessary to carry religion forward. 

This question is eminently a practical one. "While the 
missionary work has cried under its heavy load, the churches 
have built fine houses. The few unsanctified, who wish to 
have the finest church in town, out of their wealth give a 
large sum, yet at no sacrifice, for they" never sacrifice ; then 
the begging goes out among the people, and especially among 
Christians; they must give, give, though from a. narrow 
purse. They then can do little for missions. There remains 



112 A MONUMENT. 

then often a large debt to sap future years. A debt, — a 
standing curse blights the power of the Church. Such church 
edifices are unfinished till the gilt letters, — "in debt" adorn 
the front. Nor is it true that these same persons would not 
under any circumstances pay the same cash to missions. 
Were the rich or the masses importuned, teased, goaded in 
like manner for missions, and were made to feel the press of 
that public opinion which forbids meanness, they would give 
the same to missions. The money for these fine buildings 
often comes hard and by heavy machinery. Apply this 
machinery to raising missionary money, and the world will 
be soon full of the worship of God. As it is, the fine church 
buildings block the wheels of the Church itself. 

To day the question is a practical one. If a society leave 
thirty thousand dollars to spend, the question is, Shall it be 
used here, in brick, and mortar and paint, or in building and 
adorning souls in China? That same sum would educate 
about six hundred native helpers in Turkey. Would they 
do more for Christ than a stone or brick monument built 
over dead Christians in New England ? 

Satan blinds men with the idea that they are doing God 
splendid service, while enough is needlessly spent on fine 
churches to evangelize the whole heathen world. 

People ought to use taste in serving God. Yet considered 
merely as a matter of taste, great expense is not necessarily 
a mark of beauty and its worship. Nature and true art de- 
mand a certain simplicity in their adornings. Tawdry, 
gaudy, and their synonyms are not equivalent to the beau- 
tiful, the tasteful. But allowing the church buildings to be 



DORIC STRENGTH. 113 

really fine, good in themselves, yet that they are good in 
themselves is no proof that there is nothing better. That 
copper is good as a circulating medium is no proof there is 
nothing better. To have souls adorned and praising God 
is better than brick and mortar adorned and praising God. 
Though fine arts are a means of cultivating the soul, they may 
not be the means. Silk is clothing, yet not the clothing : 
and it may be better for the whole race to wear cotton than 
one tenth of them wear silk and the rest go naked. Though 
fine arts are good, it is no sign that there is nothing better. 
Men of the world may know of no higher work than they do. 
Poor tinmen, brass or copper workers may not appreciate 
the work of the fine goldsmith. But let the finest arts 
flourish. Let Christians work in polishing stars for their 
heavenly crowns, and in building pillars for God's heavenly 
temple. 

Then let oppressors snatch from the poor and build pala- 
ces for themselves, and temples to themselves, and to God : 
but let the godly poor be in better business. 

Any religion, which thinks more of flowers than of souls, 
more of art than of redemption, may build fine churches ; 
but it is not becoming in those who have anything to do in 
saving men. The rule in church building, as in the ordi- 
nary life, is the rule held by early Eomans, by Primitive 
Christians, by Puritan Fathers, — the rule held by men in 
beginning a great enterprize, — a rule of simplicity. We 
are beginning to fight against Satan, beginning to save the 
world. We must have Doric simplicity, if we will plot for 

Doric strength, and prepare for immortal labors. 
10* 



114 PINCHING. 



The grand reason of fine church building is found in the 
fact of private luxury in the life of the worshipers, and 
the sound plea that they ought not to treat God shabbily, 
while they dwell at ease ; but the shabbiness is that they 
are at ease while God's cause is suffering* Those who dwell 
in ceiled houses, troubled by the blowing of a little wind or 
the piercing of a little damp, and who are careless of the 
greater wants, physical and spiritual, of the masses of the 
human race, are not yet born into the new race of Christ. 

A lady does not hesitate to delve in the mud to find a 
lost jewel; so she should not fear to lay off her jewels, and 
delve in low places to find souls as her best jewels. If she 
seek the one, and not the other, she cannot claim to be counted 
as one of the ornaments of God and of the Church. 

Christ's cause must be pinched, or we must be pinched. 
Christ's cause has been, pinched: we have not been pinched. 
How shall it be in the future? The luxuries of church 
members would put the cause of Christ on luxurious footing. 
The dollars are for self and the pennies for Christ. How 
shall it be when the dollars are for God and the pennies for 
self. 

Who can submit an account of his expenses to God, and 
on his knees say, — I have denied myself all I could : I have 
given to Christ all I could: 

So much spent for Tobacco : So much for Missions : 

So much for Dress : So much for Bibles. . 

Is the spending regulated by the comparative worth of the 
two articles? 



DOUBLE SERVICE. 115 

Is the spending regulated by the comparative need of the 
world for the two articles? 

Is the spending regulated "by a necessity, or "by a whim ? 

If we give to God that money now spent for the passions 
of dress or of appetite, we do double service ; we cut off our 
sins, and help God's cause. 

This doctrine of extreme simplicity in house and church 
building, and in bodily adorning, is very unpopular on 
earth ; yet the earthly notions in the matter may be very 
unpopular in heaven. Does it please God to see millions 
perish, while we take his money to build him handsome 
houses, into which the very masses around us will not enter ? 
Does it please him that we wear the same dress, and have 
the same signs with the multitude in the Yanity Fair; or 
shall we seem as from another country and busy on special 
work ? 

The work we do on souls, and the expense we are at in 
this respect, is doubtless pleasing to God. Though earthly 
travellers may care little for it, yet bands of angels will 
visit it, and God's eye will watch the work, and His hand 
lend guidance that all that is done may be fit for heaven's 
adorning. 

The whole world is only God's workshop, and His work- 
men may not spend time in building nice houses. After 
the world is all converted, and all the poor are fed, then we 
may build splendid churches and put on our best robes ; 
rather then the New Jerusalem will descend from above. 

If any determinately cling to a luxurious life, it is a sign 
that the god of this world has blinded their eyes. Things 



116 A WARDROBE. 

in this life seem near ; eternity and its rewards seem far. 
Satan has seen the jewelry and garments of heaven, and 
thinks it a light thing to give men tinselry, if he can buy 
them off from such glories. Bowing to the power of earthly 
sceptres, men do not revere the tremendous majesty of the 
King of Kings. 

Furnishings and equipage, or silks and rich dinners, 
will he the pride of no man in the dying, or the judgment 
day; but to have furnished the poor, to have helped the 
lame, clothed the naked, fed the hungry, to have blest the 
bodies and souls of the needy will be the comfort and the 
pride in those days. 

What are the fashions of this world to a man with the 
immortal hope in him ? He cares for no scoff of busy or 
idle fools. He has a larger experience. One who, as be- 
fore his time, has peered into the wardrobe of heaven, is 
not in a perfect passion in respect to the last arrival from 
Paris. One who has gazed on, and tried to lift one of those 
heavenly crowns, does not care to spend money, which 
might feed the poor, for gems to make him weigh well with 
the world. Hear his story: — "I dreamed of viewing the 
earth from the far hills of Paradise. Brick blocks and tow- 
ering mast could not be seen ; only could be seen a cross and 
the Nazarene. The jingle of earthly coin was unheard there ; 
only were heard the groans and prayers of a dying race." 

"An expectant of eternity, and not an everlasting inhab- 
itant of this wretched world" may look forward to Christ's 
luxuries, and let the magnetism of that world draw him off 
from vanity. 



THE NOBLEST TEMPLE. 117 



Though it is denied you to build a splendid outward 
temple by which to draw the admiration of men ; though you 
may be unable to gratifiy your tastes in the adornments of 
private life, — it is yet reserved for you to adorn the cause 
of God, and furnish souls for heaven. 

We plead then for building the temple Charity, a nobler 
work than Solomon dreamed of, — a temple which we can 
never adorn too much, and which is now shamed by the 
poverty of our gifts. 

This is a work in which we may be more generous than 
that kind king, who loaded robbers with gold, because he 
thought they were gods : we know whom we worship. He 
has a work for many helpers through many years. 

In this work we may be more generous than heathen 
kings. One hundred and twenty seven kings built a 
hundred and twenty seven royal pillars in the temple of Di- 
ana. In the wide temple of our King of Kings, the royal 
servants may build each his pillar ; some small, as if scarce 
rising from the earth ; some reaching so far into the heavens 
that they seem to be let down thence. These pillars are built 
one stone at a time. Let, then, the wise, little by little, gather 
materials, with which to build up an Unselfish Life. 

There is a very beautiful record of the use of the precious 
metals in one of the ancient religions of America. We read 
that the earliest Children of the Sun carried with them a 
wedge of gold, which as seed, sinking into the ground, 
brought forth golden grains. These were " tears wept by the 
Sun." These were gathered, not for coining, but that the 



118 WHERE GOD DWELLS. 

rulers might adorn the temples of the Celestial Friend. 
The royal state was religions; the king's wealth was God's 
wealth. Enormous planks of silver, and a cement mingled 
with liquid gold were used in the beauteous "building of their 
sacred places. In the gardens of Yucay were golden baths 
supplied by subterraneous silver channels. There was a 
fountain with a jet of gold ; fish of gold and silver, birds 
of gold, and curious animals carved in gold seemed play- 
ing in the water at its base. These holy gardens were dug 
with silver spades. Gold and silver appeared in the forms 
of vegetable life. Golden corn, with silver leaves and 
silver tassels, and other plants of like skilful make adorned 
that soil. On every walk, to receive the flowers, were vases 
of silver, as tall as a man and twice the reach of his arms 
in girt. In this western Mecca were nearly twenty score of 
temples ; one chapel for the rainbow, with its brilliant arch 
all radiant with many colored jewels; a chapel built to the 
stars ; one built to the moon, adorned with polished silver, 
and a silver shield to reflect her beams ; there was the tem- 
ple of the Sun, girt without with a broad band of gold, and 
within, outshining all its gilding, was the gilded face of the 
sun, which glowed with the rising light of each' new day till 
the light was reflected on every side by fine gold and gems, 
filling the place with a glory as of heaven. 

This was gold in the service of idolatry, though the Chil- 
dren of the Sun knew it not. We know what we worship. 
Slowly and painfully, we will bring gold and silver to adorn 
the temples of our God, building up those charities, in 
which His Presence loves to dwell. 



CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 



Coveting and selfish spending are no less sins in the 
Church than out of it, — sins indeed allowed by God for the 
same reason that he permits sin in the world at all. If 
one reason may he that men grow strong fighting it, it is 
plain duty to fight the sin in the Church as well as out 
of it. 

The second table of the law is as binding as the first. If 
one does not love men whom he has seen, how can he love 
the unseen Christ? Love to man is shown only by an Un- 
selfish Life. Coveting is as much a crime as killing, and 
as the sin of murder is defined by Christ as being in a men- 
tal state, so coveting is also a crime though known by no 
overt acts. 

The Bible is full against coveting as against a sin. ' ' Take 
heed and beware" is the double warning. The word covet- 
ousness is classed with fornication, adultery, self abuse, 
drunkenness, idolatry, thieving, extortion. These names are 
huddled together as a doomed herd, too polluted to be dwelt 
on long enough to count them in a regular order. Paul takes 
them as he happens to find them ; once thrusting the cov- 
etous man between a thief and a drunkard, again with the 
wicked and the malicious, again with the lovers of them- 
selves and boasters, and again with a fornicator and an 



122 IDOLATRY. 

idolater: these have the word "or" linking tkeni, as if 
either of the sins would ruin a man. • 

Coveting is especially classed with idolatry, as if the 
place of business were looked to, prayed to, as some wan- 
dering Israelite might turn toward Jerusalem in his devo- 
tions. Enchantments are as much used to win the favor of 
gold, as to win the favor of images. Human faith is strong- 
er in a strong box than in the gilded face of an idoL The 
baseness of idolatry is in the worship of a brute, or a low 
ideal as the representative of God ; thus the covetous man 
dishonors the Deity, in steadfastly honoring the material, 
and from principle more than from passion, rejecting the 
spiritual. - The deliberate choice of the whole mind is not 
only to tear God from his throne, but to put Mammon in 
his place. Is this worship, exercised within the visible 
Church, no sin? The sin lies in disobeying God's command 
to give to the needy. 

Does Nabal ask, " Shall I take my bread, my water, my 
flesh and give it?" 

St. Basil answers, -'The shoes that you hoard till they 
rot, belong to the barefoot:" 

A Proverbial Philosophy answers, "He that hath more 
than enough is a thief of the rights of his brother." 

The Indian Philosophy answers, " Those who dress their 
meat but for themselves eat the bread of sin." 

Is fornication or blasphemy any worse than witholding 
from God his due ? If a minister should take money from 
charitable collections for his own use, he would be denounced 
as the basest of hypocrites. If God give church members 



WHIP AND TOOTH. 123 

money to spend for him, and they refuse to do it, what will 
they say of themselves, they themselves being judges? 

Judgment must begin at the house of God, before it 
go through the world. If any sin is to be dealt with, it 
must be that covetousness which is not so much as to be 
named among Christians. Though such an one be called a 
brother, no company is to be kept with him, — "with such an 
one no not to eat." The Apostolic argument plainly is that 
God judges those without, but those within the Church are 
to be judged by the Church, and the wicked persons put 
away from among them. Now will the Church act thus ? 
The whip and the bloody tooth should not be the first argu- 
ment ; the flocks should be led by the still waters ; but if 
any will not be led, the gospel force is to drive them out of 
the flock. This is plain scriptural duty, — to discipline for a 
bad use of money, as for any of the foul sins it is classed 
with. 



But discipline is the last work ; faithful dealing goes be- 
fore it. This, by right or wrong, is left with the pastor as 
the leader of the church. The responsibility is with the 
minister. Though the prophet's adage is, "Like people, like 
priest;" and though the people love to have it so, when false 
words fall on their ears ; and though God allows the spiritual 
man to be mad, as a punishment to a mad people, — yet 
the chief blame of mischief is ever thrown on those whose 
business it is to lead in right paths. If the leader go only to 
the edfite of danger, the impetuous people run and drop over. 



124 peace! peace! 

"From the least of thern even to the greatest of them, 
•every one is given to covetousness," was spoken of Jewish 
clergymen. 

Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough : 
they all look their own way, every one for his gain from his 
quarter. 

Who is there among you that would shut the doors for 
naught? Neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for naught. 

For there are many unruly, and vain talkers, and deceiv- 
ers, whose mouths must he stopped; who subvert whole 
houses, teaching things, which they ought not, for filthy 
lucre's sake. 

The index is of a ministry smooth in its doctrine, men 
pleasers; or, all correct in doctrine holding the truth 
-in unrighteousness, very smooth in its application, avoid- 
ing those sins, which are rolled so sweetly under the 
tongue of some members of the communion that it would 
seem that the sins could he never dislodged, hut by the 
most skilful cutting or tearing away of the tongue itself. 
Again and again it is written in the prophet, They have 
healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, 
.saying, Peace ! Peace ! when there is no peace. 

They have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray ; 
following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved 
the wages of unrighteousness. 

Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock. 

And through covetousness shall they, with feigned words, 
make merchandise of you : whose judgment now of a long 
time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. 



agitate! 125 

In any application of these texts to the evangelical min- 
istry of our times, it is to be noted that there is no class of 
men who live so simply and generously, and who in word 
and in deed so faithfully teach the Unselfish Life. If, in 
any quarter, there is any lack of close preaching on covet- 
ousness and luxurious living, it is from no lack of apprecia- 
ting the power and the prevalence of the sin. Any easy 
preaching on the subject is from no lack of appreciating the 
need the world has that the Unselfish Life prevail, but it may 
rise from fear of offending those over whom ministers would 
still retain an influence. It is not that they love their means 
of living, or are dependent on their hearers, for they are 
men of wit to live ; but they love the souls under them and 
are discreet about offending, lest their influence be lost. Yet 
when we consider the breadth and depth of covetousness, 
and the power of a prodigal life as it is in the world and in 
the Church, it is certain that the sins should receive frequent 
and thorough rebuke from the pulpit. 

Without implying that there is too little of such preach- 
ing, it may yet be proper to consider the necessity of such 
faithfulness ; and the method it may take ; and the results 
likely to follow it. 

So far as its necessity is concerned, the reform should be 
more preached and agitated than the work for the remo- 
val of Intemperance or Slavery, for once open the purse 
to God, and He will spend freely in putting down giant 
wrongs. Selfishness is the thing the pulpit aims to put 
down. If selfishness exhibits itself in its handling of prop- 
erty more than in any other shape, this is to receive the 



126 THE MOTIVES. 

chief blow from the pulpit. If a man pray and talk in 
meeting and is yet covetous or too spendful, God does not 
get his money. It Tbecomes then a duty to preach to that 
man on giving to Christ more than on prayer and exhorta- 
tion. This duly is the more important if we consider the 
difficulty of convicting a man of the misuse of money, and 
the man's dangerous state if he remain unconvicted of it. 

It is noteworthy that one twelfth of all the recorded 
words of Christ have a direct hearing on the uses of wealth, 
and that in more than two thirds of the instances, he brings 
to bear the motives of reward and punishment, as being 
the most likely to impress and rouse the mind. 

While we plead for much preaching on this subject, we 
also claim that it be chiefly in the use of these divine mo- 
tives, — hope and fear. 

Human law largely uses the motives found in reward 
and punishment only because this law is founded on the 
conduct of the Governor of the universe. The divine 
constitution declares that, — 

To give no reward to right doing is to disapprove : 

To give no punishment to wrong doing is to approve. 

God has married duty and pleasure, the cross and the 
crown; though temporally they seem divorced, yet their 
union is eternal. 

The thirst is not satisfied by tasting the rock, but by that 
which springs from it. The reward is ever in the tough 
rock; we need only smite. To pray, to forgive, to fight 
sin are good deeds ; but God asks us to do them for their 
reward. It is best for us that we do them. There is in- 



SADDUCEES. 127 

deed a law of rectitude demanding our obedience: but that 
which is right gives the greatest joy through the whole of 
our being. The operating motive is, indeed, love to God, 
but love to God because he is lovable. "We enjoy His soci- 
ety more than another's. While we run on His errands, we 
do not stop to think of the reward ; but our faith assures us 
that it is coming: and were it and all hope of it lacking, 
the soul would fall away from that Treasurer of the uni- 
verse. It would do this, simply because the constitution of 
our nature bids us do it. If we believe that God is, we 
must believe that he is the rewarder of those that diligent- 
ly seek him. 

Chilling worth's suggestion is, — " If God chooses to annex 
promises or threatenings to every precept, we should not 
try to prescribe better directions." 

Say what we will of the argument, as a matter of fact 
there is no way of waking a man to activity for Christ but 
by showing him that he is not safe where he is, and that the 
joy is greater in Christ than in sin. Those who may argue 
for the opposite, and state the matter to sinners, stripped of 
all threat or promise, fail to move them. The tendency is 
bad. Sadoc once suggested that men ought to act rightly 
with no thought of the reward, and from his excess of vir- 
tue sprang the Sadducees, denying all future rewards. 

Baxter, making out a " Catalogue of seasonable good works 
for those who dare trust God with their riches," urges men 
to "Take it as the happiest bargain they can make, remem- 
bering that there is no such security or advantage of money 
to be made in any way as in using it for God." Abundant 



128 AMEN. 

quotations to the same point might he made in the earl}' and 
the later church. 

Note the bright and the black catalogue of blessings 
and cursings that God set before the Jews. The intense 
woes were answered by the "Amen" of the trembling 
people. The boundless blessings were answered by an 
"Amen" in the hearts of all the people. This principle of 
reward and punishment underlies the whole dispensation, 
as the grand bottom rock of motive. It incidentally ap- 
pears all through the simple narrative or the profound 
argument. It would weary to quote, or refer. Only once 
read the Mosaic Law with special reference to this, and all 
doubt ceases as to the propriety of using such motives. 

The motives for God's conduct are secret ; but the motives 
by which he would guide us, belong to us forever. 

The last words of the Old Testament give warning of a 
curse. The last words of the New Testament warn the 
world of the Lord's quick coming, and that his reward is 
with him. 

No man may bless himself in his heart, saying "I shall 
have peace though I walk in the imagination of my own 
heart; " for the Lord will not spare him. Anger and jeal- 
ousy shall smoke against that man ; and all the curses writ- 
ten in the book shall be upon him ; and the Lord shall blot 
out his name and separate him unto evil. Groping at the 
noon, that man shall become a proverb and an astonishment. 
The Lord will make his plagues wonderful. The pestilence, 
and extreme burning, and the sword, as eagles shall chase 
him. A nation of such men shall perish quickly from off 



NEGLECT. 129 

the dry and fruitless land. In hunger, thirst, and naked- 
ness, and in want of all things, and under an iron yoke, 
they shall serve strangers. 

But in keeping the commandments is great reward. If 
one will seek wisdom, he shall find in her left hand riches 
and honor, and she shall adorn his head with an ornament 
of grace, a crown of glory. "When the stranger, the father- 
less, and the widow eat and are satisfied within thy gates, 
then the Lord will bless thee in all the work of thy hands. 
Blessings shall overtake thee in city or field, in the fruit of 
the body, and the fruit of the land, in the rain, the grass, 
the corn, the wine, the oil, and the increase of kine and flocks. 
Thine enemies shall be smitten, fleeing seven ways. Length 
of days shall be to the man who cleaves to the Lord his 
life. It shall go well with such a generation. 



Opening the New Testament, the first warning is to flee 
the coming wrath, — a revelation of wrath against violent 
transgression, and against the neglectors of Christ. Neg- 
lect of Christ is crime. The force of the Bible curses is 
hurled on the negligent. 

In preaching against a covetous or luxurious life, the 
chief force is to be spent on this point of neglect, — the sim- 
ple letting alone of God's cause. It is not enough to make 
a profession of service, — "I go sir." Such a man may 
"go" to count the money bags, or revel in the wine cellar, 
while the vineyard grows up to waste. 



130 APOSTOLIC. 

The christian virtues are divided, according to Adam 
Smith, into those of a positive sort; as, justice, whose ne- 
glect brings disgrace, and whose performance "brings no spe- 
cial honor: and again, there are negative virtues; as, 
generosity, — whose neglect brings no disgrace, and whose 
performance brings special honor. 

There appears to be a large class, whose religion is built 
only on the negative virtues. They look more to the fact 
that neglect is no disgrace, than to the honor that fol- 
lows positive virtue. Because men do not rob and steal 
they are counted holy : and because they are not dealt with 
by the church for not giving of their substance, they pride 
themselves on ''regular standing." Those bishops of Ire- 
land, who counted vast wealth to themselves and disbursed 
nothing, only neglecting to give, in the times of fearful fam- 
ine, were yet "apostolic." Those in regular standing ask 
grace over meats, — but were G-od daily to neglect them as 
they daily forget the poor, they would not live long to praise 
God's bounty. 

It is not always remembered that he who "passes by on 
the other side," is no neighbor. To neglect a friend is 
the sign of ill will. The negative is as essential as the 
positive in making up the character of electricity or mag- 
netism. That which absorbs all colors, and expresses none, 
is often itself called a color. The battalion of neglectors, 
under their black banner, are most efficient. The Deliverer 
of Italy writes, — "He who can seize an arm, and does not, 
is a traitor." We gather from Enchiridion, " What thou 



IT IS WKITTEN. 131 

givest to the poor, thou securest from the thief: but what 
thou witholdest from his necessity, a thief possesses." 

The scripture deals severely with the neglectors of good 
deeds. Meroz is bitterly cursed. Briers and thorns pun- 
ish the meanness of Succoth and Penuel, simply because 
no bread was given to the faint yet pursuing warriors of 
Israel. It is a sad charge, — " Thou hast not given water to 
the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the 
hungry." 

Job calls down a curse on himself, if he had seen any 
perish for want of clothing ; a curse on himself, if the poor 
were not warmed with the fleece of his sheep. 

Again it is written : If thou forbear to deliver them that 
are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain ; 
If thou sayest, Behold we knew it not; doth not He that 
pondereth the heart consider it ? and he that keepeth thy 
soul, doth not - he know it? and shall he not render to 
every man according to his works ? 

Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also 
shall cry himself but shall not be heard. 

He that hideth his eye from the poor shall have many a 
curse. 

The sin of Dives was not his purple robe, but the fact 
that he neglected Lazarus, whom even the dogs befriended. 

There is a curse on the unused talent ; a curse on having 
no oil ; a curse on the barren fig tree ; a curse on keeping 
back part of the price. 

To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him 
it is sin. 



~h 



132 YE GAVE ME NO MEAT. 

If a brother or a sister be naked, and destitute of daily 
food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be 
ye warmed, and filled ; notwithstanding ye give them not 
those things which are needful to the body, what doth it 
profit? 

But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother 
have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from 
him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ? 

Neglect is prosecuted at God's bar. The Judgment Day 
will be a severe test. 

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat. I was 
thirsty and ye gave me no drink. I was a stranger, and ye 
took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and 
in prison and ye visited me not. 

The wealth of the ages is not piled up in God's treasure 
house for those who do nothing. 

The depth of the crime of neglecting Christ's cause needs 
to be powerfully set forth ; for many men, who refuse charity 
to needy bodies or souls, think not that they may thus be 
refusing aid to that Lord who himself walks in disguise, — 
like the Christ Child in Germany, or as some earthly 
monarch may in disguise find out who are the loyal and who 
are his enemies. To save money by neglecting Christ's 
cause is as bad as selling Christ's cause for money. A 
Christ neglected is a Christ betrayed. While Christ fasted, 
would we have feasted ? While He drank gall and hung 
naked upon the cross, would we have worn fine robes ? Yet, 
to day, souls for whom Christ died are hungry ; they spend 
nights in tears and cryings for relief. If while they drink 



"our" church! 133 

bitterness we sip pleasure, we would have done the same 
while Christ was dying. 

Satan gains a great advantage while "our" Church 
keeps quiet, patiently waiting for the Angel of the Eevela- 
tion to fly through the Heavens preaching the everlasting 
gospel. While we coolly sit by, smoking, or feasting, or 
counting our coin, an evil angel is ruining a soul in India, — 
a soul that has longed to know of Christ, but now perishes 
because we will not extend our help to him. It is a* 
murderer's voice, "Ami my brother's keeper?" Letting 
God alone, and letting God's men alone, make up the es- 
sence of our depravity. . 

Are we indifferent to that question, which absorbs all the 
universe, and which agitates the eternities? Is all hell in 
motion? Are the angels leaning over the battlements of 
heaven to see how men conduct themselves in the great de- 
fence? Is Christ moving? Will he fall foremost in the fight? 
Satan and the Savior are in the death grapple for the soul of 
man ; yet the man sees no difficulty, no need of so much 
noise, is busy here and there, picks up shining pebbles and 
worships them, saying, — "I guess God will not care, I am 
only a neglector of the fight." 

Does a man join the hosts of God? Does he as a true 
Crusader preach on the march, and by his march best 
preach ? Or does he stand still as a guide post, with one 
dead hand pointing toward heaven, bearing large letters 
saying, — It is so distant! What "moral insanity" blinds 
the mad at heart while they live, and how soon do they go 
to the dead ! 

12 



134 THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT. 

It is worthy of question, whether one twelfth of the 
church may not be counted with Judas, because of their 
neglect of guarding Christ's cause, if not by positive meas- 
ures of betrayal. Four out of fifty, and eight for every hun- 
dred in our churches may perhaps be numbered as only 
professing friendship; tasting the red wine, before they 
spill the blood of the Innocent. The neglectors of Christ's 
cause do not evince their power in the time of prosperity, 
but in the hour of gloom, when extra funds are needed. Thus 
Christ was not taken when daily in the temple, but in the 
night. Yet depressions are as necessary as that the rising 
tide should at every wave run back almost to its place. A 
betrayal gives an impulse to the conquering cause. "When 
Judas goes out, the Son of Man is straightway glorified. 
The means of Christ's torture is the chosen symbol of the 
risen Christ. Thus the neglectors of Christ's work may be 
the means of Christ's victory: but the doom follows the in- 
struments till their habitation is made desolate, and none 
dwell in their tents, and their days are few, and it were 
better for them if they had not been; born for their neg- 
lect of God, their separation from God is made eternal, 
and the timbers of the house they had built are now the 
timbers for their torment. 

Now against such crimes it is urgent that those knowing 
the terrors of the Lord should persuade men. In those 
years when the cause of Christ seems in special need, the 
band of betrayers, of neglectors is large, and may be found 
gathered under the voice of every preacher. 



RECOMPENSE OF REWARD. 135 



Not only is the argument of the curse to he used, hut a 
free use may he made of the argument of the hlessings that 
come to the faithful. 

The Saviour's great sermon "begins with rich hlessings, 
giving comfort to the mourning ; pointing the reviled chil- 
dren of Christ to a heavenly reward. 

I will give you peace ; my yoke is easy. 

Those leaving earthly treasures shall have a hundred 
fold, and eternal life. 

Christ commanded no young man to strip off his riches, 
without promising in the same sentence a treasure in 
heaven. 

Christ endured the cross, despising the shame for the joy 
that was set "before him. Christ knew the glory he would 
have with the Father. He knew the praises to the Lamh, 
with which the redeemed million would ever fill heaven. 

Moses turned from Egypt's pleasant sins, and chose the 
affliction of Israel: for he had respect to the recompense of 
reward, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than 
all the treasures of Egypt. 

Men run that they may ohtain. The eye lets into the 
soul the inspiration of the spoils. 

In the Kevelation, the address to each Church ends with 
a promise to him that overcometh. 

The faithful unto death surely gain a crown of life. 

Had we hope only in this life, we were most miserahle ; 
hut if Heaven's day is near, the tossings of one painful 



136 THE BLESSED LIFE. 

night are nothing. Every toiling moment is full of glory, 
for every toiling moment is full of that faith which ends in 
fruition. Will the pilgrim stop in the desert to build cities 
for trade, when the better country and the city with foun- 
dation is close in sight? Will an ambassador to heaven de- 
lay to gaze on the trinkets of earth ? Will the voyager to 
the port of heaven stop to fish in the mouth of every creek 
by the shore? 

We are now blessed through media ; the promise is that 
soon the weight of blessedness will come direct on the soul. 
Christ stimulates us by high hope, and promise of a City 
founded on precious stones, walled and paved with polished 
gold, where the nations of the saved, no more plagued by 
the unjust, enter at the ever open gates of pearl, and walk 
by streams of life, and eat the fruits of life, and pluck life 
giving leaves which they bear to unblessed worlds ; or climb 
green or jagged mountains, high as the whole breadth of 
the city, and far up those shadowless sides, rising in no 
light of the sun, find that architecture and that glory, which 
hints of the perpetual presence of the Lamb as the perpetual 
Temple of his people ; and there in the ceaseless day they 
raise triumphant songs, sit on thrones, drink the wine of 
Qod, eat the marriage feast, and are united to the Creator, 
the Eedeemer. 

Whatever may be the presentation of this argument of re- 
ward, one doubt comes again and again from many pious 
people, namely ; — Though it is proper to appeal to men to 
give money on the ground of the punishments of God to 
ncglectors, is it right to appeal to men on the ground of re- 



PURE LOVE TO BEING. 137 

ward to generous givers ? Is not the motive so liable to 
abuse as to vitiate its worth ? 

No man avoids reading the Bible or praying, from fear of 
doing it from a wrong motive, though he acknowledge that 
his only motive is to escape evil and to get good from so do- 
ing. No man then may avoid giving charity from fear of a 
wrong motive, though he acknowledge that his motive be to 
avert mischief or get good from so doing. It is right to ex- 
pect temporal and spiritual blessings from one as from the 
other. As a means of grace, alms giving is one of the great 
powers, and in all religions ranks high as the holiest devo- 
tion. Ought we to pray to God from pure love and with no 
hope of a blessing ? We do not scruple to exhort to prayer, 
though it be seeking good for self ; rather we urge this as 
the reason men should pray. Ought we then to give alms 
from " pure love to being," with no hope of a blessing ? It 
is the height of faith to believe that God will do as he says 
he will. If it is not in itself displeasing to God for one man 
to do business with another, and gain interest or increase of 
wealth, surely it cannot be displeasing to God for a man to 
do business with Him and gain money by it, if that money 
is to be used for Christ. God is one of the firm and as the 
better financier of the two will furnish the funds to do the 
business with ; and if the human factor spends money for 
the firm to day shall he expect that to morrow he will have 
none to spend ? When the morrow comes, he is to expect 
money enough for that day, not enough for years to come, 
but a daily allowance ; and as the business increases on his 
hands, he is to expect every day an increase of his ability to 

12* 



138 THE DIVINE PARTNER. 

do good. Those who say that we should give our charities 
expecting not to receive again, altogether mistake the na- 
ture of giving to God. The giver is in the relation of a 
J partner in the same business with God, — gets his funds of 
Him, and spends for Him, and may therefore rightfully ex- 
pect more, and plead the promises God has given him that 
he shall have more. To give to God for the sake of getting 
a return to use for selfish ends is not done. Selfishness does 
not have that faith. 

The fear God's people have of urging this motive of re- 
ward is wrongly based, namely, on the idea that the [reward 
is to be used for self, that is, we give to day that to morrow 
we may have more and use that for ourselves ; which would be 
using God's charity and promise to promote sin. One may 
well hesitate about urging such conduct. But God gives no 
promise or reward to such conduct. The promise and re- 
ward are ever to those whose whole lives are busy in alms- 
giving. Give to day, and God will give you double to mor- 
row, not for yourself but for you to give again. God gives 
every man board and clothes ; and if one will bestow his 
gains on the needy, God will give him greater gains. It is 
practically safe to urge the motive in this shape. To gain 
and use cash thus is the only legitimate way of doing busi- 
ness. This alone is a practical faith, a holy life, living as 
a steward of God. Without this, it is impossible to please 
God. This implies Christian character. It is the essence 
of our religion, the living out of our religion. By this 
faith in Christ a man believes in the future rewards as real 
and abounding, and does business with the eternal world; 



PAULINE. 139 

a more splendid and wealthy commerce than any Eoyal trade, 
or the spoils of distant seas. 

Eeading the commercial language of Paul we find him to 
be the master merchant of the world ; his gains are in souls, 
and at death he gains Christ, the eternal God, as his wealth 
and portion forever. 

His advice to rich men is, That they he rich in good works, 
ready to distribute, willing to communicate ; laying up in 
store for themselves a good foundation against the time to 
come, that they may lay hold on eternal life. 

This is the Pauline style of preaching on this subject. 



These things of the spirit are foolishness to the natural 
man, neither can he know them till they are spiritually dis ■ 
cerned. "Will men seek the light? Men's intellects are, 
through preaching, to be stirred up to a better appreciation 
of spiritual rewards. 

Men do not realize the glory of the earth, the powers of 
the natural, the possibilities of greatness which may rise 
from the estate we now have ; we lie sleeping with not a 
"dream of the secret powers which surround us. We are like 
tropic insects flitting amid .gorgeous scenes, and hovering 
over an ability in nature, which we cannot even conceive of; 
how then can we aspire to find out heavenly things ? We 
do not see how things beyond our experience are possible. 
We therefore treat the unseen as a preacher's myth. It is 
difficult then, to bring men, even in coldly calculating their 



140 BLINDNESS. 

chances for physical wealth to give any credit to the account 
of a world which surpasses the garden of Yucay, the fables 
of Aladdin or hank or railroad stock as much as angelic 
character rises above the spirit of the "bears on 'change." 
Though men admit that God has, all incidentally and gratui- 
tously, thrown out a world of beauty for the worm humanity 
to sport in, they yet cannot see how Ged can surpass this 
world's glory when He shall lay out to bless his high angels, 
or please His own eye with kindling new flowers in the waste 
of the universe. 

Failing to know the material heaven, how then can such 
men be brought to love and work for those spiritual treasures 
which are hinted of in the types of heaven ? As we are 
told that our ideas of God may reach only to the reality of 
the glory and happiness which may dwell in the least angel, 
so our fondest present conceptions of the spiritual blessings 
afforded by that life may be only on a level with the reality 
of blessing which will be conferred by the mere physical 
glories there. 

If then, one cannot stop in the press of his business, even 
so much as to believe in the solid inventories of that Store 
House, how can he be brought to think on the higher riches 
of the Infinite? It is a fair question, How can blind" 
men be brought to see the unseen ? It is a question which 
lies all along our whole religious effort. 

The answer is that by the foolishness of preaching and 
by the power of God the eyes may be opened. The preach- 
ing to a covetous generation is to be convictive of blindness ; 
showing that there are dangers before men's eyes which they 



HOPE AND FEAR. 141 

cannot see. These motioves of blessing and of cursing will 
succeed if any will. These levers once fixed under the 
masses will lift them into a more sublime life. Seeking 
profit, men care chiefly for reward ; avoiding loss, men care 
chiefly to avoid punishment. If they know that God can 
tear him down to day, or build him up to morrow, these 
facts will affect the covetous soul, and prepare him to ap- 
preciate the retributions of the future world; the wealth 
that is above the earth, and the sorrows that are deeper 
than poverty. Deep night would all fail, and the powers 
of darkness take their foul flight, if the streaming lights of 
heaven, and the lurid glare of hell might once shine into 
the windows of the soul. The thundering of God's present 
wrath, the powers of the world to come, if brought to bear, 
may break up coveting, as some earthquake shaking a glass 
house. 

Let men once realize that since the beginning, the passion 
for wealth in its best success is only vanity, vexation, wrath, 
ruin, hell ; and that to do business with God, for God, is 
certain and solid success, full of peace, good growth and hea- 
ven ; let men once hear the praises of the saints and the la- 
mentations of the lost, and they will not scrape up shining 
heaps to increase their own weight of woe, but will pile up 
gold as a lively sacrifice to the God of the eternal reward. 

Baxter directs to write on the shop walls, — 

"I must be in heaven or hell forever." 

Let this Fear, this Hope, swing from the pulpit till men 
are moved. Doctor South declares that "Hope and Fear 
are the two great handles by which the will of man is to 






142 KINDLY PREACHING. 

be taken hold of, when we would either draw it to duty 
or draw it off from sin." We are not to take "back the incite- 
ments to duty, but apply them with power. 

There need be no trouble about this preaching if it be 
in kindness, as one would kindly give a medicine to save 
from death. The patient's love will rise when his health 
rises.. The teaching is to be not as from man, but from God. 
The doctrine is that the criminal is an unfit judge. Self is 
a partial, an interested party ; and it is God who promises 
fearful punishments or blessed rewards. No one was ever 
brought into the kingdom of God by a man's scolding or 
complaining ; but many men have been startled from the 
sleep of sin by the voice of God's threateniugs though utter- 
ed by a man, and then have come into the kingdom at the 
kindly voice of God's promise uttered through the weakest 
of men. It is doubtless better for preachers to pray than 
to complain ; to tell what God says, and not tell that savagely. 

Covetousness should be preached against more than Slav- 
ery or Intemperance. Some men will not preach on either 
of these sins, for fear of rousing the old Adam in some so- 
called children of the Second Adam ; or for fear that by the 
straight preaching, men may rise and boil wrathfully, and 
lay the agitation upon the minister, saying, — "Hast thou 
found me, mine enemy ? and art thou he that troublest 
Israel?" 

But if these men cannot be charged with coveting before 
one congregation, how will they stand in the Judgment Day ? 
Are men mad, saying, — there is one false charge on them ; 
they will prosecute for libel, and get revenge, even if they 






SAFE TO THE PREACHER. 143 

have to build another meeting house ; yet these same Chris- 
tian men lie quietly every day while twelve hundred million 
men falsely charge God, and they, though recorded as God's 
children, will not pay one cent to teach them better ! 

Though Chief Priests and Pharisees perceive that the 
speech is against them, and seek to lay hands on the faith- 
ful minister, yet the multitude will save him. The masses 
love and protect such a man, and the masses turn and rend 
him who is unfaithful to the common instinct and the com- 
mon religion ; and the God of the common people deals with 
the unfaithful, requiring blood of him who saw the coming 
sword and blew not the trumpet. 



CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 



13 



The root of Christian manliness is self denial. If selfish- 
ness is sin, then the denial of self is the giving up of sin. 
This is no matter of sorrow, but the first step of joy. One 
"becomes willing to have no will of his own, to be made 
nothing of, if it please God and is for the good of men. 
The only question is, Lord what shall I do ? Not my will, 
but thine be done. The God of Love and of Humanity 
reigns in the will as on a throne. In this giving up the 
will to God, and to the Unselfish Life, a man gives up 
his time, talents, property, and all that is subject to his will. 
As he has no will of his own, and this is his daily prayer ; 
so he has no property of his own, and this too is his daily 
prayer : " Not mine, but thine." If one gives up his will, — 
the greater, he cannot keep his property, — the less. If one 
keeps his property, it is certain that he has not given up his 
will. 

There can be no work done in a soul, so long as it is the 
common receptacle of every piece of forniture, or dress, or 
of sheep, oxen, and land titles, which Satan may chance to 
to crowd into its ever open doors. The merchandise must 
be scourged out; the den of thieves become a house of prayer, 
before the soul is fit for the use of Christ and Humanity. 

Read God's Law Book. Law and Gospel are full of charity. 



148 god's law book. 

A poor man comes to ask money, just before the Year of 
Eelease, in which the debt cannot be collected. 

Beware, that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, 
saying, the seventh year, the year of Eelease is at hand, 
and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou 
givest him nought. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine 
heart shall not be grieved when thou givest him ; because 
that for this thing, the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all 
thy works, and in all that thou puttest thy hand unto, for 
the poor shall never cease out of the land : therefore I com - 
mand thee saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto 
thy brother, to thy poor, to thy needy in thy land. 

And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay 
with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a 
stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee. 

Give a portion to seven, also to eight, for thou knowest 
not what evil shall be upon the earth. 

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do with thy 
might; that is, according to the Chaldee paraphrase, "Do 
all thou canst, according to thy utmost ability, in alms and 
charity." 

Say not unto thy neighbor, Go, and come again, tomorrow 
I will give, when thou hast it by thee. 

The Son of Sirach writes, Make not the needy eyes to 
wait long. Add not more trouble to a heart that is vexed, 
and defer not to give to him that is needy. 

Let it not grieve thee to bow down thine eye to the poor. 

In the announcement of the new kingdom of good will 
to men, the Son commands, " Give to him that asketh of 



GO, PREACH. 149 

thee, and of him that would borrow of thee turn not thou 
away. 

Consider the ravens; sit down and think of God's feed- 
ing them, think till you learn the lesson of content and of 
faith. 

Consider the lilies, ye of little faith ! Seek not 
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither he ye of 
doubtful mind ; Bather seek ye the kingdom of God. Sell 
that ye have, and give alms. 

Physical and spiritual blessing to the world can come 
only through the Gospel of Christ: therefore the command 
is given by Him, who has all power in heaven and in earth, 
and is able to insist on obedience, — "Go, preach." Obe- 
dience is the only test of love ; the command is to preach 
not only at home, but the field is the world, and the disciple 
is to do all he can to send the word abroad. Nearly every 
man can furnish the means of keeping one native helper at 
work in heathen lands. Twenty five cents a year, two hours 
work a year, for missions is not fulfilling Christ's word. 
This is no obedience ; this is no love. If Christ's primitive 
disciples had staid in Jerusalem, hired Peter to preach to 
them, formed a mission Society, given Paul a trifle to go 
abroad, — this would have been no obedience to Christ. Our 
hope in missions comes from the fulfilment of this command 
in the Constitution of the Church. 

Mercy has always been reckoned the "Queen of the vir- 
tues." Even a heathen says "What I have, is so mine that 
it is every man's." 

How much more then will the Scripture make this the 

18* 



150 Christ's summary. 

test of religion. Therefore God "writes that it is an accep- 
table fast, to help the poor, the hungry, the naked. The 
justice, mercy, and humble walk, required in the phrase of 
the prophet, is repeated in Christ's summary of the law, 
namely, — -judgment, mercy, faith ; mercy filling the mid- 
dle ground, as the body ; justice, is to help mercy ; and 
mercy is the work which proves the life of faith. Pure re- 
ligion and undefiled is to visit those in affliction, and thus 
keep unspotted from the world. This is the new command- 
ment. This love found in the deed, as on the tongue, is 
the proof which assures our hearts before God. Love is the 
fulfilling of the law. The abundance of one. is to supply 
the wants of another, thus supporting the weak ; distribu- 
ting to the necessities of the saints, — doing it with simplici- 
ty, that is, liberality. It is a debt owed, that the eye be 
not on one's own things. Charity seeketh not her own. A 
man is to seek not his own, but another's wealth. 

Let every man labor, working with his hands the thing 
that is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. 

The Bible urges mercy, and its modifications, — and what 
grace is not related to it? — more than all other virtues. 
Notice on the other hand the remarkable silence of the 
Scripture, that there are no exhortations, saying, — Be thou 
grasping ; By no means give aught to thy neighbor ; Blessed 
is the Usurer. AVe have no report of heaven as a place for 
money changing. The gold of heaven is uncoined. 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 151 



The scripture rule of giving is definite. It is not left to 
discretion, nor to the lack of faith. It is measured by the 
very passion which would hinder the giving; as if it were 
written, just in the proportion you would take and keep, in 
that proportion give. 

It is a royal law, Love thy neighbor as thyself ; love 
him not better than thyself, hut just as much, no more, but 
as much. It is a Golden Rule: Do unto others as you 
would that they should do unto you; just as you would want 
help, if you were in their case, that is, a fair division. If 
you, now so mean and grasping, were as needy as those who 
claim your aid, you would not be satisfied with one item 
less than one half as much as you now own. 

Such was John's preaching: "He that hath two coats, 
let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath 
meat, let him do likewise." Not tear off a sleeve, or rag of 
one coat, but give him half the two coats, and half of your 
food! 

This Eule is not written,— In giving, do to others as others 
would have you do, — else, you might be subjected to de- 
mands above your ability, and especially might be made the 
minister to sin; as the drunkard would have you give him 
money with which to feed his passion. The Rule is, — Do to 
others as you, according to your careful reckoning, would 
have others do to you, were you in the needy circumstances 
that now ask relief of you. You are then to think before 
you give. Your present thought is, If I become a drunkard, 



152 PRACTICABLE. 

let money be kept from me ; you therefore deal with that 
begging drunkard as you would have him deal with you. 
But if you would like cash for drink, you are equally bound 
to help him. There is then in this Rule no need or chance 
of abuse. God's Eule requires no wrong. It is safe and 
practicable. 

If a man demands bread of you, you are to consider, Is 
he idle ? Your conscience may commend or condemn your 
giving to him, just in proportion to your own idleness. If 
you love idleness and would eat the bread of indolence, your 
Golden Eule will be to feed the idle, and give him as much 
as you in his case would demand. If you would eat the 
bread of toil, you may justly urge him to do the same. Do 
to him as you would have him do to you with your habits 
were you in his case. If you are modest in your desires for 
goods and luxuries, your judgment will say, that the necessi- 
ties of life are all, you, in any case, would ask for ; there- 
fore all the Golden Eule bids you give. But if you are 
grasping in your desires, or dote on pleasures, and can fairly 
judge that were you in his case, and he in yours, you would 
want a large bounty, you are bound by that Golden Eule to 
give him largely. Thus this Eule may temper your appetite, 
cut up your covetousness, and make it more blessed for you 
to give than for the poor to receive. 

The poorest man has ability. If a child or friend is sick, 
he does not stop the cure because of the cost. If he gets into 
debt, or sells the farm, the child is yet worth more than 
lands. So, were he very nearly related to any missionary 
work, he would not suffer it to live unhealthily, for it is 



INDIA. 153 

worth more than many lands ; and the rule of his giving is 
to be this Golden Eule. 

Were you a captive in a heathen land, you would ask, 
that your friends raise a ransom. If your son were sick or 
a captive, you, poor or rich, would find the ransom. As 
you would that others should do for you, or for yours, so the 
Eule demands that you raise great sums of money to deliver 
those now moaning in the "bondage of idolatry. 

In India a hundred and eighty thousand souls, in one 
place, have one for their teacher, even Satan ; while one 
minister of Christ is his only human adversary. It is as if 
you were dwelling amid a community of that number of 
idolaters in the heart of a Christian land ; yet these Chris- 
tians would send only one teacher, furnishing no good soci- 
ety, no schools, no Sabbath, no Bible. If you were dwelling 
in want, and mental darkness, and were then condemned by 
God for sin, and were then to see these Christians going to 
heaven in ease, you would say, they obeyed not the Golden 
Eule, and have no right to heaven ! You would not only 
desire them to just double their force, namely, send two 
missionaries to the one hundred and eighty thousand, but 
you would not cease to demand great sacrifices from Chris- 
tians, till you were as well provided with the gospel as 
themselves ; and if they did not study into your case, and 
give liberally you would cast them out of the Christian list, 
and let them be to you as publicans and themselves heathen, 
to whom you would like to preach a few sermons on a self 
denying Gospel. 

By this Golden Eule, your duty in missions is, to find 



154: TURKS. 

out the state of the heathen and give as liberally as you 
would want to have given to you were you in their case. 

Among the Turks are a body of missionaries, whose pro- 
portion to the population is as if four ministers of Christ 
were to occupy all the United States. If all our ministers, 
except four, were to go to Turkey, and there were no more 
probability of a new ministry rising up here than now in 
Turkey, soon the relative moral status of the two nations 
might be almost literally exchanged. With our lost nation- 
ality we should pray Turkey to bless us. The Golden Eule, 
then, suggests that we help Turkey to that glorious force of 
character which may be waiting for her under the Christ 
we may speedily make known. Yet for a moment, allow 
that our glory were in decay and we were seeking Christ 
our life. The Turks send four missionaries to us, and a 
number of missionaries to our blacks, as we have sent mis- 
sionaries to their Armenian servants. Yearly, some sixty 
of our black young men in their poverty walk fifty or two 
hundred miles to the school that the Turks have kindly es- 
tablished for educating native ministers ; they beg to be re- 
ceived, but are obliged to turn back again because wealthy 
Turks do not send on money enough to pay their board and 
lodging. Thousands of our people long for the Gospel, yet 
the Turks sleep and smoke while we perish. Surely we 
should say, " They are yet a Christless people." The Golden 
Kule, to day, bids us do for the Turks, as we would have 
them do for us. 

Take another case. Select some of our best citizens, the 
solid conservative element in our States, crowd them naked 



AFRICANS. 155 

into a slave ship and set them to toiling in Africa, under 
circumstances impossible to escape; they would grow " stu- 
pid as negroes," and those dainty women, who wept over 
"Dred" and " Uncle Tom," would now bend under fearful 
burdens through long journeys, treated according to their 
new name — " cattle." Would these unfortunate conservatives 
pray that bank stock, and fair jeweled fingers might lift the 
burdens from their wives and their daughters ? Yet, unen- 
slaved save by the Golden Kule of Christ, these same men 
permitted six noble sons of Africa to slip from the mission 
school and the preaching of Christ, and dfop again into the 
heathen darkness, because fifteen dollars for each — money 
enough to pay their yearly board, could not be raised in all 
America ! 

The G-olden Kule is to do for Africans as we would have 
done for us were we in the same case. 

If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we shall do as much 
for them as for ourselves. If preaching is good for us, we 
ought to raise as much to send the ministry to our fainting 
brothers across the globe. Then we may begin to think that 
we have charity and, if we love not these unseen brothers 
how can we love an unseen Father? 

It ean be easily seen that an attention to this Golden 
Kule by all men would soon bring in the Golden Age. 
Fulfilling this Koyal law, would make all men Kings. 
Coveting and its catalogue of crime, and its clanking chain 
of curses would be taken away ; Christ and his kingdom 
would crown the earth. 

The Golden Kule as a law of beauty stamps the Bible as 



J 50 AUTHORITY. 

divine. The Author knew what would make a perfect world. 

By what authority is this Eule urged on men? 

The Sinaic table proclaims this law; Christ twice re- 
peats it; Paul twice declares it; James urges it; all repeat 
the same words, — Love thy neighbor as thyself. It is 
hacked up "by the authority which puts forth the first table 
of the law. Is it duty literally to love God with all the 
heart, and with all the soul, and with all the mind, and 
with all the strength ? The Giver of the same Law puts 
forth the second table, like unto the first, and equal to it in 
the fullness of its claim. It becomes the test of love de- 
manded under the first table. An unquestioning obedience 
is the proof of love. If Christ requires obedience to the 
first half of the law, he requires obedience to the second 
half, the completion of the law. The one is to be as literally 
fulfilled as the other. 

If we dare take God's goods for our use, we cheat the 
poor, and cheat God also; we break both tables of the law, 
the love to God, and love to our neighbor. 

Every word in the Bible is weighed ; there is a curse on 
him who shall dare shift one word. 

This Golden Eule is a part of the Constitution of the 
Church. It contains the promise of all needed good to the 
needy race. When its power is evoked, we may hope for 
the most powerful missionary life. 

Incidentally, we find here the true definition of covetous - 
ness. It is not "inordinate desire," for no man admits his 
desire to be inordinate, and he has no standard which will 
condemn him. Nor yet is it a "passion for more property 



A BRAZEN RULE. 157 

for selfish ends." A passion for more property for one's 
own use is no more covetousness than the keeping of what 
one already has for his own nse. God's Golden Eule is 
this: "Love thy neighbor as thyself; " the neglect of this 
Unselfish Life, in matters of property, is covetousness. 
Under this definition, the love of fine clothes is as much a 
crime as the love of gold. The diverting of property from 
the good of the whole race of man, and turning it into the 
channels of business, or luxury, chiefly for one's own advan- 
tage, is the Brazen Eule of the devil. It is covetousness. 



A further article in the Constitution of the Church, is 
embodied in the life and words of Christ, namely, the Com- 
mon Brotherhood of man. 

The beauties of friendship are praised, yet the love of all 
men is better. 

Love of country is praised, yet the love of the whole world 
is better. 

The Mosaic Law calls the Hebrews brothers. 

The spirit of Christ seeks to establish a common brother- 
hood ; to establish the use of the plural number in prayer 
to one Father. Christ's love took in nothing less than a 
world, else we had perished. There was nothing puny in 
Christ. He was not afraid of so great a work. No narrow 
unbelief lodged in his soul. He was ready to sacrifice in 
the great struggle to win a whole race back to God and the 
hope of eternal joy. 

14 



158 THE COMMON BROTHERHOOD. 

A common theory of life is, "I will make myself and my 
family easy in the world; it is all I have to do." Now the 
spirit of Christ is, to make his family happy as possible. 
The Christian then is to make his family happy as possible. 
His family is broad as that of Christ, broad as the world. 
He belongs to the House of Humanity. Here belongs that 
famous passage, — 

But if any provide not for his own, and especially for 
those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
worse than an infidel. 

If there is one heathen in your family you are bound to 
teach that one, even though it cost you something and you 
have to wear a poorer coat. "Will you strut about with 
finery, while your child is bowing to an idol because you 
will not give him a Bible to teach him better ? So if there 
are seventeen heathen in your town, or twelve hundred mil- 
lion in the world, by this Law of Christ you must help them 
all as much as you can, giving to these as you would to 
your brother; for it is Christ's word that men are brothers. 
If a brother is in need you do not have to stop to be teased 
to help him; you seek out his needs, and share the last 
crumb with him. 

The root of all right doing, of love to man is in the love 
to Christ ; loving men because Christ loves them. No rule 
rule is necessary to force the heart of love to do all it can 
for Christ and Christ's men. All rules fail to operate for a 
moment on that heart where no love is ; while years of ser- 
vice seem as a few days to one bound by love. When love 
of the Common Brotherhood prevails, missions will prosper. 



THE NEW LIFE. 159 



This is the test. The man who has a thing he cannot give 
to Christ and his fellow men is not a renewed man. If one 
never can see duty, when it is duty to give, he is not a new 
man ; he is still "blind, and needs Christ's healing. 

In the new life the struggle is all over ; "body, soul, and 
property, once used for self, now go for God's use ; Mam- 
mon the great leader, who stood all alone over against God, 
is defeated; the words ''self" and "own," are terrible as 
the watchwords of Satan; the affections are set on things 
above ; the members on the earth are mortified ; the affairs 
of this life cannot entangle ; as a pilgrim, the christian's 
only use for money is for necessities and charity ; the reso- 
lution is to call nothing mine but God ; all glory is in the 
daily cross of Christ, by which the disciple is crucified 
unto the world. Whosoever forsaketh not all he hath can- 
not be a disciple. He either denies God, or he denies all 
else. Loving God and loving all mankind, he "hates his 
father and near friends and his own life," and cares to give 
only this exposition of these texts of stumbling ; namely, 
They do not mean, — Be stingy and hug all your possessions. 
The giving of goods to day is only one incident in his per- 
petual payment to God, as though the debt were larger than 
he might pay. Mghtly, as he calls on his soul " How much 
owest thou unto thy Lord ? " he repeats the words of Sala- 
vian : — 

" A man is not bound to give away all his goods, unless, 
peradventure, he owes all to God ; a man is not bound to 
part with all his estate, that is, unless his sins be greater 



160 THE CHILD OF CHRIST. 

than his estate ; and he need not part with it all, unless 
pardon he more precious to him than his money, and unless 
heaven be worth it all, and unless he knows justly how 
much less will do it. If he does, let him try his skill and 
pay just so much and no more than he owes to God : hut if 
he does not know, let him he sure to do enough." 

The very nature of christian submission, the teaching of 
the scriptures as to living and what is the essence of reli- 
gion, the exact Golden Eule of beneficence* and Christ's 
idea of the brotherhood of man give vigor to the Constitu- 
tion of the Church, and lead us to expect that under this 
Constitution will spring up a power that shall renew the 
world, cutting off covetousness and luxurious living, — the 
roots of evil, — and bringing in the Unselfish Life. If -so 
vast good has already risen from the partial development of 
the benevolent principles on which the church is founded, 
what results may we anticipate when we see how thoroughly 
missionary is the root and fiber of Christianity. 

All help to perishing humanity must come through the 
Church. The blind are not expected to lead the blind. 
Who have the poor always with them ? When bodies suffer 
minds are dark, and souls die, who comes to the rescue ? 
The child of Christ, the partaker of the free gift, the heir 
of heaven, the pilgrim, the stranger, the bearer of the Cross, 
the follower of the Meek and Lowly is God's appointed visitor 
to the hungry, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. He 
was appointed to "remember the forgotten." 

The church comes to the torrid world, refreshing as an 
Amazon. Christian charities fly over the earth, as birds 



AN ARMORIAL SEAL. 161 

sing over the bitter sea, or perfumed winds sweep the des- 
ert. Christian ideas are bent above the heathen night, 
bright as the firmament; cheering their gloom, inviting 
their study and promising joy to those souls that shall 
mount forever. 

This work of the church is its only work. Every son of 
Christ will adopt the armorial seal of the Genevan Eeform- 
er, holding out to God a hand with a flaming heart. The 
old christian medal, representing a bullock between a plow 
and an altar, "Keady for either," — ■ should be recast and 
worn by every son of Christ. To give away what one does 
not need is no virtue. The cutting off of luxury is not 
charity. The cutting must be to the quick. Profound self- 
denial is the profound watchword. If one will live in 
Christ, he cannot measure himself, his motives and actions 
with the great mass of the world, for he stands above the 
world as a King ; his only business is to deny himself in 
the cause of the Only One and his fallen. 

What is it to live ? It is to deny self. An Unselfish 
Life is the only real life. The suffering Pascal says, We 
must look on life as a sacrifice, and the accidents of life as 
of no account to the Christian only as they help or hinder 
that sacrifice. Thomas a Kempis with his scourge urges 
that self denial is the basis of spiritual perfection. Eichter 
teaches that every healthy and eminent faculty is augmented 
in power through self denial ; and that in self renunciation 
alone can the entrance upon real life be said to begin. 

Saurin declares that The whole system of Christianity 
tends to Charity ; the doctrines to charity ; the duties to 

14* 






162 CHRYSOSTOM. 

charity ; the promises to charity ; the ordinances, which 
assemble ns in one house as members of one family, where 
we eat at one table as children of one Father, — all tend to es- 
tablish the domain of charity. 

By this outworking of Christianity the dead world will, at 
last, wake and work. There is a great power in a clean 
life. More precious than rubies are the wise words dropped 
from the Golden Mouth : — 

What was it then, you say, which made the Apostles 
so great ? I answer that they contemned money ; that they 
trampled on vain glory ; that they renounced the world. If 
one gave thee the choice of turning all grass into gold, or of 
being able to despise all gold as grass, wouldst thou not 
choose the last ? And rightly, for by this last thou wouldst 
most effectually draw men to the truth." 






DOING BUSINESS FOR GOD. 



The application to practical life of the ideas embodied in 
the Constitution of the Church will result in killing cove- 
tousness and prodigality, and induce Christian men to do 

BUSINESS FOR GOD. 

This practical faith at first attacks its old enemy. That 
zeal which would once crucify Christ for a little silver, now 
for a great Christ turns to crucify the lust for a little silver. 
It is a lust worthy of death. Count its failures to help you ; 
its lagging steps when you would use that silver for Christ. 
Accuse it of haste in elaborating hinderances on that way to 
Christ. Prefer, as the chief charge, that this coveting has 
not only slain your poor "brothers, but has dislodged God 
from the soul, has aspired to be your god, has done many 
wondrous works which bids you be not slow in convicting it. 

Crucify the passion. Hunt it as an infant ; taunt it through 
life ; allow it no home ; some night, take it ; arraign it ; 
crown it with thorns ; spit upon it ; let your most royal pur- 
pose condemn it ; nail it up in thievish company; spear it, 
till the strength is gone ; lay it away in a decent burial, 
and watch the grave lest vagrant desires rise and steal it 
away. 

It is only by slaying this lust that the soul is prepared to 
do business for God. The hands of charity slay the lust. 

All things may become not only clean but a means of 



166 AN EXPULSIVE POWER. 

grace when you give alms of such things as you have. The 
swellings of this Jordan may not only drive out the greedy 
lions of covetousness, hut may clothe the valley with a liv- 
ing green. The purging agreement of Zaccheus to give half 
his goods to the poor, and to pay back four fold to those de- 
frauded, was his first step toward an eternal weight of glory. 
The acceptable counsel of God is, to break off iniquities by 
shewing mercy to the poor, and thus lengthen tranquility. 

Those regulations, which only check the current of covet- 
ousness, really spread it ; then permit it to rise till it over- 
leaps or breaks down the barrier and in a heavier stream 
boils and rages to carry more gigantic mills of mischief. 
To only hinder the passion is to increase it. One must dry 
up the fountain. Only a consuming passion for charity can 
accomplish it. " The expulsive power of a new affection" 
must work in the soul. Christ does not ask us to give up 
our wealth or business ability, but to use it for Him. Love 
for the Saviour must impel to take up the cross and follow in 
His ways of freegiving. Dagon will not fall till the ark of 
the living God be brought into the heart. The shackles will 
not fall till, as threads of tow, they have smelled the fire of 
God's altar. The Creator is well able to break up the strata 
of our selfishness, and strike the streams which shall heal many 
nations. It is in God's hands to raise an arch of benevo- 
lence, which shall consecrate all our commerce, as some co- 
lossal sentinel guarding our harbors, receiving sacrifice, and 
bestowing blessings. Then the old plunder gathered of cov- 
etousness will serve God, as Egyptian gold built God's 
ark and the glory of the tabernacle. Or, as Bonifiace cut 






HOLY COVETOUSNESS. 167 

down an oak sacred to Thor, so that branching wealth, 
which has long waved for Mammon shall he cut for God's 
use. 

"We cannot know that coveting is thoroughly dead till we 
find that no human anger rises in us against any who wrong 
us pecuniarily. If coveting is dead, our only feeling is that 
of a righteous indignation for a wrong done God, to whom 
alone belongs any thought of vengeance. 

The riches of this world hang loosely on such a man. He 
is ready to shake them off. Benevolence becomes the habit 
of the mind ; while grasping is only a passionate act to be 
wept over. The every day acts tend to God's glory, as the 
steps on a journey all lead onward though the mind be in- 
cidentally on many things. It is no indolent spirit that 
will serve Mammon or God. It is a wide awake spirit, 
a passion to be rich or to have heaven's riches. 

We read that the god of Eiches runs swiftly when sent 
by the powers of Hell, but limps when on the errands of 
Heaven. To get money for benevolent uses demands all the 
vigor of business, a persistent accumulating force as that of 
the miser piling dollar on dollar. Charity becomes not an 
incidental affair, but the one business till the end of life. 
As Satan goes up and down seeking whom he may devour, 
the Christian is walking up and down as busily to bind up 
those bitten by Satan. This requires "that holy covetous- 
ness which is the truest charity," a pinching to just the ex- 
tent which shall best promote health and the most healthy 
influence. Then a man will be zealous of good works as if 
created for them. He will be burdened with care in doing 



168 IMPEDIMENTA. 

good. He will be eager for an object of charity as for a 
bargain. Then an aged man will go np or down a hill as 
quickly to relieve the needy as to find a bit of gold. He 
will be as earnest to give as those in want are to take. He 
will be no more impatient of calls for charity, than Christ is 
impatient of perpetual prayers ; and to him no music will 
be so sweet as the voice of the suppliants for mercy. If one 
may thus once get the upperhand of covetousness, it is fair 
to take thorough vengeance . upon it for its long tyranny. 
The riches must be torn from their rusting place in the heart. 
But while riches are removed from the heart, it is not best 
that the hand be far from riches. The hand should rather 
become the channel through which Eiches may pass, though 
they may not there abide. 

There is no need to scorn the world- The wealth which 
is dragged as a dead burden may spring into life and prove 
a goodly companion. Blessedness is locked up in the use- 
less gold; as treasure or beauteous caves or springs of 
health are shut up in a rugged mountain. The gods of the 
ancients were sometimes made slaves and built city walls, 
cleaned stables, drained marshes and killed off monsters. 
Gold the modern god may also be turned to powerful use in 
purifying the world. Bacon, and a heathen philosopher 
long before him, says, Though riches are the baggage (im- 
pedimenta) of virtue, hindering the march and disturbing 
the victory, yet the baggage cannot be spared nor left be- 
hind. It is the use of wealth which determines whether we 
shall say we have much " goods" or much " bads. They 
are " goods" only when used for good ends. 



USE MAKES WEALTH. 169 

My Lord Bacon teaches that those are the best riches 
which thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheer- 
fully, and leave contentedly. 

The Arab teaches that to abstain from coveting is to be 
rich. 

The Eoman teaches that to be rich is not to possess much, 
but to use much. 

Misused gold is not wealth ; usefulness is the test Use- 
makes wealth. Iron may thus be good as gold, and in the: 
eye of the savage is better, for it is of more apparent use. 
Beads and shells, or a little uncertain something wrapped 
up in a bit of skin, or a piece of soap may be used. Hides, 
corn, salt, and dried fish are added to the list of barbarian 
currency. Use is the test. The mine must be open, must 
show itself, must give. It is no wealth if it be rich only 
to itself. Does a diamond in its dark bed gloat on its brill 
iancy ? There is no light and no wealth if no imparting to 
others. Use makes wealth. 

The most substantial wealth is a. use not found in cash, 
but in giving the heart, using the whole energy of the life 
in the tremendous enterprises of God. A generous heart, a 
useful purpose is wealth ; seeking to give is wealth. An 
intent, a stretching out, compassing land and sea for an object 
of charity, — this is wealth. Through our early wilderness, 
threading the tangled forest, facing hardship and death 
itself, with a body whose failing strength was aided by the 
strong passion of his soul, De Soto passed, so wrapped in his 
desire, that the rocks, woods, and streams echoed only gold, 
gold, gold. So rushes the true soul enamored of true wealth, 



170 THE WEALTHY HEART. 

cliasing swift through the streets of poverty and disease, 
through the acres of old Father Satan and his Son Death. 

" He is a rich man in whom the people are rich ; he is a 
poor man in whom the people are poor." Head or hand in 
use are wealth, and thus the poor may be rich. Power with 
God is wealth, and the praying man is rich by faith, having 
nothing yet possessing all things, and able to say, "Silver 
and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto thee." 
The healing virtue may be worn under threadbare clothes. 
If there be a willing mind it is accepted according to what 
a man hath. The will is a deed in the account of our Mas- 
ter. Those counted poor in earthly tax lists may enrich 
many and be millionaires in the inventory of heaven. 

Use is wealth ; the best use is the best wealth ; and the 
best use is for God and humanity. The best wealth is not 
found in gold. The best wealth gold can offer is found in 
Doing Business for God. 

One must believe in the real presence of God, then must 
have a speaking acquaintance with him, that is, pray, and 
read the Bible — God's letter and book of rules, — and recog- 
nize the voices of Providence. The man modestly goes into 
the business God has already set up. He then respects 
the customs of the house; trusts God's honest methods, 
and mysterious adventures ; does not fear desperate enter- 
prises. In pursuance of the legitimate business the man 
has a claim upon the power of Omnipotence, the wisdom of 
the Infinite, the purse of the Treasurer of the Universe. 

He that does business for God has no right to take the 
funds furnished and apply them to other uses, but as God's 



HONEST TOWAED GOD. 171 

agent or steward is to pay out and collect in as God pleases. 
A servant has no right to take the tools he should work with 
and sell them for his private advantage. An executor has 
no right to take for himself what is given into his charge 
for widows and orphans. If a man has entrusted to him a 
thousand dollars, is very grateful for the favor, says he will 
pay at any time when wanted, and the owner at last sends 
an agent for a part of it, will the "borrower say, "I don't 
believe he needs it ; " " I do not believe you are his agent ;" 
or, " If you are his agent, you shall not have the money and 
make me poor?" Yet thus God lends men their property, 
gives them intellect and muscle, and owns all. If then one 
not only stands under this obligation, but has acknowledged, 
before God, angels and men, that the property is all God's, 
that he himself owns nothing, and that this is his pride, 
that God is his Father, yet will he give nothing to his 
Father when his agent comes ? Shall we cheat our Father, 
our God ? 

There is one way in which Christ wants our help, ever 
wants it. Our goodness extendeth not to Him. Can a man 
be profitable to his Maker ? Yet in certain persons Christ 
himself goes begging. You have the poor with you always. 
Those poor in body, in social, intellectual, and spiritual life 
are "thy poor and thy needy." He that giveth to the poor 
lendeth to the Lord. If a man asks money, and offers 
good security, we lend with pleasure ; we expect gain : when 
God asks money for the poor, do we. hesitate as if God 
the Surety of the poor, would not repay us ? 

Doing business for God implies an ambition which takes 



172 THE SPEAR. 

in nothing less than the world. Ordinaiy business men will 
build a brick store, a house, or a village, — some petty enter- 
prise which shall live after them. The Christian man of 
business will rather devote himself to a thing that shall 
forever tell for God through the universe. Planning large 
charities broadens the mind. Christian ambition reaches 
widely as Commercial ambition. Trading men go, or send 
•clerks, to distant countries for gain. Christian business 
$men may establish themselves thus in heathen lands, acting 
as lay missionaries; gaining a living, and substantially 
building up the cause of Christ. Thus each man, however 
ihumble, can make his mark on the moral world, as the mer- 
est shell fish or tiny worm can leave its mark in the rocks 
forever. 

Every business man does enough to feel it, to know that 
lie is doing business ; so when doing business for God, a 
man is to feel his charities. He will offer no burnt offering 
■of that which cost him nothing. " To give away a little 
out of a great deal is not charity." Christ's Charity was 
not complete till he felt the spear. Men often complain of 
heavy burdens of charity, because they pay their fair part 
of supporting the gospel in their own community. They give 
.to this but do not much feel it. But this is no more charity 
rthan what they pay for flour or firewood. It is a necessity 
■of life, feeding them, comforting and saving them ; and it 
tends to make their neighbors respectable. Having done no 
more than this, the reign of charity has not begun. Charity 
once seated in the soul, takes no such narrow vision. 
Christ's business man, civilizing his own parish, has also 



AS HE IS ABLE. 173 

pity on barbarians abroad ; lie makes that his business and 
does business enough to feel it. The man of Christ is as 
free in this giving as he is in any business advances, for 
this free giving is the one end of all his business. 

If one does business for God, his charities will flow free 
as a mountain spring; and no "organic" machinery of 
agents is needed to help the flow. 

If one gains by system', he may give by system a certain 
per cent of gain ; or, at some point, cease to enlarge his 
capital, and give all his earnings. This becomes as system- 
atic as the cultivation of the soul. The seasons of giving be- 
come as precious as seasons of prayer, or Sabbaths, or com- 
munion seasons. We come nearest our Lord in our mo- 
ments of charity. Charity is next to devotion. It is a de- 
votion of the hands, as prayer is of the lips and heart. 

Chrysostom advises to keep a box for charities in the 
place where one usually prays, and always begin the devo- 
tions by a gift to the needy. 

Paul advises, Upon the first day of the week let every one 
of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him. 
Have it ready systematically. Have it in proportion to 
your ability. 

In the law the command is, Give when you pray, and let 
the giving be sincere and profound as the praying, and 
each according to the ability. 

In Deut. xvi : 17, it is written, — 

They shall not appear bsfore the Lord empty: every man 
shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the 
Lord thy God which He hath given thee. 

15* 



174 DEBT. 

Christ's rule is the same, whether applying to Charity in 
goods or in prayers. To whomsoever much is given, of him 
much shall he required. 

If a man has much, he may "be under as great obligation 
to pinch himself as though he had little. The much is no 
more his than is the little. 

A man who is prompted by a right spirit, who cultivates a 
charity broad and deep as his own soul, who devotes his 
business to it, never questioning how little but only how 
much to Grocl, that man will study the defects in his plans 
and make the most possible out of his affairs , increasing his 
machinery like some extensive mining operation, or system 
of government taxation, with countless hands picking up 
gold for God. His plans look forward and take hold on the 
enterprising future. 



The necessities of any large, lively business are such 
that debt may become essential to success. In order to take 
advantage of the times, extra outlay may be needed. Fifty 
thousand dollars spent to day, may save a hundred thousand 
next year. Economy then demands the thousands to day. 
It is very unsophisticated, betokening a mind innocent of 
practical life, to reason that men fail because they contract 
large debts for incidents in business. The true cause of 
failure is found in a luxurious life, or carelessness, or the 
recklessness of a covetous heart. Success is by a careful 
and large spirited planning, that is ready to take advantage 



ENGLISH DEBT. 175 

of new openings in business, and if gain be at band does 
not fear a little temporary debt. The ground is a safe one ; 
a small expense, though a debt, to day, may save a great 
expense or utter ruin by and by. 

The advantage in peculiar cases is illustrated by the 
sound policy of public debts. We instance the English 
debt because the English more than any other people seem 
to understand the wealth of debt. England will protect and 
enlarge her power, though at times it cost more than current 
receipts. An enemy is to be avoided, or a new friend made, 
and an enlarged and protected trade will soon increase the 
revenue and pay the bills ; and if one generation benefit the 
next, the next ought to share the taxation. 

Any outcry against the plan, as poverty stricken and 
bankrupt, is founded on the supposition that the debt is like 
that which one individual owes to another, while it is really 
like the debt of a man to himself ; as sometimes a man's 
brain borrows money of his hands, and the hands lend it, 
knowing that the educated brain will be able to pay and 
with good interest. The people lend money to the Govern- 
ment to protect them from foreign ravages and to open up 
new trade. The people thus keep that wealth which was 
once taken from them, and get rich from trade. But the 
Government in protecting the people comes into debt to 
them and to get the means of payment, taxes them in 
their increase of property, and in the course of time gets 
enough of them, or more likely of their children ; so there 
is no loss, but the positive gain is that the old ravages 



176 CRAMPING. 

have been long stopped, and other lands have been open to 
trade and become civilized. The people will most gladly 
lend their money to the Government, for they need help and 
find the Government a better paymaster than any short 
lived concern. 

Now all this is a plan to make Englishmen rich and it 
does it. It is indeed very unfortunate that Old England 
is so situated as to be obliged to spend so much in protecting 
herself from the fear of evil and for advancing trade, and 
for bullying her neighbors ; yet as she is, there is seemingly 
no better policy than for her to do so, and, in doing so, a 
debt is her right arm. 

Erroneous views on this subject have prompted many na- 
tions to meanness, cramping the energies of the people. 
It is possible that our own government maybe too penurious 
in some directions, as too wasteful in others ; though in the 
latter item they are greatly surpassed by Great Britain. 
Governments are made to serve the people, and can often 
undertake important enterprises to which private capital 
cannot well be called. Expenses and debts for the actual 
benefit of the governed are not to be decried. 

The above principle is a fair one for any man or set of 
men doing business for God. To day the fields of Christian 
business are all open ; a liberal expense must be had if the 
business is to prosper ; a little expense now will sow the 
fields with good seed ; a year's delay may allow the devil t 
sow them and great expense will some time be necessary to de 
stroy his work. If money for the emergency is not at hand, 



A GOOD POLICY. 177 

those doing business for God ought, according to the theory, 
to borrow, and trust that the advantages accruing will repay 
For example, it is acknowledged that trade and wealth are 
directly promoted by Christianity. An enlarged Christianity 
gives an enlarged means of wealth. The sooner, then, the 
whole world is converted to Christ, the sooner the ripest 
state of wealth will appear. But, to promote Christianity 
takes money. Now it would be good policy if the people 
would all do business for God, and be broad minded, and 
say to those who act as their agents in doing the Lord's 
business in foreign parts, — 

" We have left this foreign part of the enterprise chiefly 
with you; we trust that you, as our servants, will look after it, 
the only thing for you to do is to keep moving, to go forward, 
no step backward ; if you want more money, ask for it ; if 
we cannot give it to you just when you ask, then borrow ; 
but keep moving, and we shall soon be able to pay, or our 
children will be able to do it, for the increase of Christiani- 
ty will increase their ability to give ; indeed the benefits of 
a Christianized world will come to our children more than 
to us, and we are not unwilling that they should help pay 
for the work, and as the corporation will not die with us, 
they, becoming members of the Missionary Board, will feel 
the same interest that we do." 

Undoubtedly if God's people would so authorize their 
factors in God's business, the work would go forward faster 
and more thoroughly than now ; and children's children and 
the children of those now heathen could pay, and would do 
it, as citizens of the new and Unselfish Kingdom ; for God 



178 IMPRACTICABLE. 

will doubtless make coming generations more honest and 
faithful than this. Such a debt, if contracted sincerely and 
prudently for God, would be more likely to be freely paid 
than any government debt by taxation; for God endors- 
es the work of his children, and can easily obtain silver and 
g old and hands to pour it into his treasury. 

Such a debt might be necessary under some special pres- 
sure to go forward. But it could never be properly set on 

foot by A SHIFTLESS AND SQUANDERING GENERATION, AND IS 
THEREFORE IMPRACTICABLE AT THIS STAGE OF MISSIONS. 

A prudent English government, before entering on a debt 
would ask first, are we raising all the money we can? 
Again, is it necessary we should spend more ? If so how 
much ? What are the most prudent terms of spending it ? 
So before a people authorize a Missionary Board to contract a 
debt, the question should be asked, Are we raising all we 
can now ? Is it necessary for the advancing kingdom to 
spend more ? If so, how much ? What are the prudent 
ways of spending it? Undoubtedly a Mission Board has 
no right to run in debt, year after year, unless their constit- 
uents authorize it. But it is not often that a people will 
authorize a debt, because of the conciousness of not now 
giving what they can, and also because they do not see the 
pressing need of more expenditure, and do not appreciate 
the prudence of the outlay. 

But we conceive that the time is coming, when the peo- 
ple will use stronger and stronger terms in instructing the 
Mission Boards to go forward, as the men and the openings 
appear, spending all that the Divine Providence, which is 



A SHAME. 179 

always prudent, seems to direct ; and if, at the end of the 
year, the constituents cannot pay it, they will not so much 
as mention the word "Retrenchment," hut still say, "Go 
forward, and if we cannot easily pay it, we will sacrifice; 
and if our sacrifices will not pay it, we will yet go forward, 
and trust that the God who makes Christianity a means of 
promoting wealth, will give to our own children or to the 
rising gratitude of the children of new heathen converts, 
the means of paying off the debt." 

While we suggest that Christians do not now do what they 
can, and do not now appreciate how much could he spent for 
God, we yet believe that if they were to wake and do all 
they could, there would still be room for the men whose 
business it is to watch God's openings, to recommend larger 
outlay and that it would be wise for the people to authorize 
it, trusting that the Treasurer of the universe and the Au- 
thor of Eaith would put it into the hearts and the hands of 
another generation to pay. 

What we say then is this: It is a burning shame that 
Missionary Boards, with their present narrow operations, 
should ever be in debt ; the Churches could pay cash down 
with a business many times as costly. W 7 hile this is a shame, 
it is another shame that we, with so large openings as God 
has given us, have not already risen above our ability, and 
put in operation evangelical trains, at the expense of a debt 
to be paid by coming generations. England can, in the 
grateful estimate of her own people, bear a debt as a crown, 
if she only uses her funds for advancing the glory of her 
empire, and thus all the world is moved by her power; 



ISO MILLIONS CASH. 

while without this resource, she would be weak as a handful 
of stingy and faithless christians. 

We pray God that the time may come when his Church 
may have faith enough to advance his kingdom by ample 
giving, "by self denying giving, and by an increasing debt 
till the world be at the feet of Christ. 

A few years since, England, Trance, and the United States 
poured out millions of money on distant coasts to protect 
or promote trade. It is a reproach that English and Ameri- 
can christians spend only hundreds and thousands on those 
distant coasts, while their spending would promote trade 
more effectually than gunpowder and powdered Earls, and, 
at the same time, save the souls of the dying myriads. 

We hazard the opinion that if Christians will take hold 
of this matter with a largeness of view like that of long 
sighted and enthusiastic and bold and trustful business men, 
and only look to the one thing of carrying the work forward 
with ail possible power, in one generation our Missionary 
Boards will pay out their millions cash, and have besides 
an enterprising debt, and that the world will be moved as nev- 
er before by the vast machinery of the Church of God. 



It is proper, in further characterizing the man who does 
business for God, to say that, in the long and weary years 
of overcoming obstacles, losses must be met. 

Though millions of money perish in the fire, or founder 
at sea, men still build and sail. A great merchant, whose 



LOSSES. 181 

profits were a million a year prepared his way by large and 
systematic outlay and losses for ten years. The costly tun- 
nel must be bored for weeks, months and years through the 
solid rock before the " lead " be found. To hide a talent, from 
fear of losing it among the usurers, is a crime. To run 
no risk for gain is infidelity. The seed is to be dropped ; 
God is to care for it. We must expect mistakes and losses ; 
God thus tries our faith. 

Yet there is no ultimate loss in doing business for God. 
However much one may be laughed at for his foolish faith, 
the seeming retreat is the road to victory. Any wound on 
property does not rouse the covetous lust any more than the 
lancet wakes a dead man. The wound strikes deeper ; it is 
done to the cause of God. Let the enemy triumph to day ; 
to morrow the captive ark shall terrify them, smiting every 
chief city, till on the third day it return laded with jewels. 

The hindrance to any real loss is from God, working- 
through certain business maxims, keeping a man close upon 
some regnant purpose in his business, and exciting in him a 
spirit of economy and diligence. A man will lay down his 
life for an idea ; so the man who would take up a successful 
life, must do it for an idea. This idea he must himself at- 
tend to, or fail ; but he will not fail if God will keep him 
close on the one worthy thought of serving humanity. 

He will be prudent in his investments of charity. No 
unworthy cause may absorb his funds. He " considers" 
the poor, thinks steadfastly, acts wisely. He will not fat- 
ten the body, and starve the soul. No rose water philan- 
throphy diverts him from considering the immortal wants. 



182 FAITH. 

He personally examines the machinery for satisfying those 
needs of body or of soul. He will give "to" no society "but 
"through" any society that will let the money pass through 
to fall on the spot where it is needed. 

Above all, a man doing business for God has Faith. 

Commercial faith is noble though much of it is founded 
on selfishness. It is not the noblest trust. Men confide in 
each other so long as they can make anything by it. While 
a few trust, and may be trusted, by reason of stalwart char- 
acter, the many are honest through fear of the penalties of 
dishonesty, and through hope of the rewards of mutual 
trust. Merchants give money to the charge of ships which 
only God can preserve, or to men whom only God's grace 
can keep from becoming defaulters ; and yet these same pat- 
rons of a commercial faith will not trust the Just One who 
is Infinite in power. 

But those who work for God commit their adventures to 
Him and find that their success is according to their faith. 
This, then, is the chief characteristic of one who will be 
connected with God in business, namely, a practical faith in 
God's continual help ; like that of the prophet, who could 
by his faith save an axe from drowning, take poison out of 
a dinner, or draw from heaven a power to destroy earthly 
enemies. 

The church is poor in spiritual gains, through small faith. 
The tax of unbelief is the curse of the church. There is 
an infidelity in regard to the Unseen, which would ruin men 
in ordinary business. By reason of the small returns of a 
small faith, infidelity takes courage, shrinks its charities and 



A GALVANIC CURRENT. 183 

offers very feeble prayers. The touch of a living faith, 
would enliven the prayers and loosen the stiff, grasping joints 
as the galvanic current rouses the fingers of the dead. 



If, then, you will do business for G-od, first crucify the 
enemy Lust ; then experience the saving power of Charity ; 
let charity become the absorbing passion of the soul ; prac- 
tice a "holy covetousness ; " let your material wealth be 
used, not hoarded ; maintain a charitable purpose ; thus 
you will have a wealthy heart, though poverty abide in the 
pocket. Doing business for G-od, be obedient to His busi- 
ness maxims ; be honest towards God ; serve Him by serv- 
ing the poor. Do business enough to "feel it;" do it 
systematically. When needful to the advancement of busi- 
ness do not fear debt. Do not fear losses. Have faith in 
God. 



THE REWARDS. 



16* 



It is related that an eastern prince, on a journey, having 
a casket of jewels fall on the ground, permitted his attend- 
ants to gather the scattered treasure for themselves. Amid 
the scrambling, one man alone remained by him, declaring 
it his only jewel to know that he had faithfully stood by his 
king. So when tempted to run after the pelf God scatters 
on the earth, if it be our last jewel to stand by our King, 
the King of Kings will at last give us crowns enough. 
Dealing with the unseen, we must believe not only that he 
is, but that he is a rewarder of all such as diligently seek 
him. We must practically believe that every dollar in his 
hand is safe as a child in heaven. No bankruptcy can touch 
it. This is the only safe stuff we have, according to the 
old epitaph, "What I kept I lost, what I gave away I re- 
tained." 

Doubtless God is able to repay what we lend to the poor. 
No one would hesitate to lend money to the Eothschilds; — 
how much more then should we lend to the Treasurer of the 
universe. God's very house servants, the angels, may des- 
pise our regal pride of palaces, as our kings despise the 
royal huts of Africa. A string of pearls may be deemed 
of as little worth in heaven, as glass beads in Paris. It is 
therefore written, — 



188 god's wealth. 

The feet of angels in heaven, as the feet of beasts on 
earth, are set on that gold on which men set their hearts. 

God buried gold deep in the mountains, or left it to 
be played with by fishes in the streams. Man, made in 
God's image, bends to search for the yellow dust, digs it out, 
and is proud of wealth ; but God may value him no more 
for this than he before valued the heap of gold itself, or 
the shining river bed, or the oyster which hugs its pearl in 
the deep. 

The pride of earthly wealth is vanity. 

Men heap up wealth to make themselves a name. But 
their most lofty piling is outdone by industrious insects. 
The pyramids rise a hundred times the height of man. The 
white ants build their palaces three or four hundred times 
their own measure, and fill the lofty galleries with treasure. 
If, then, man is surpassed by the smallest creatures, how 
may God, walking through the universe, look on the whole 
world itself as only an ant hill working under the sun or 
pelted by the storm. Or, if the countless creations are only 
as the dust which chances to light in God's balances, what 
shall be said of our pride or wealth ? The nations are to 
Him less than nothing. It is a favor if He count men as 
"the gay motes that people the sunbeams." It is God's 
own figure of speech, — He sitteth on the circle of the earth, 
and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers. 

In making that census think we that God carefully counts 
our jewels and silks, or does he with the knowledge of his 
own wealth and the glory laid up for those who love him, 
question, Shall he that loveth silver be satisfied with silver ? 



REWARDING ALMS. 189 

Yet our God loves to display his own peculiar wealth. 
Though he overturns the best temple that a chosen people 
could build for him, he preserves the well of Jacob and the 
pool of Bethesda. Though he ruined Eome, he left a place 
for the Aqua Claudia to pour its stream. The music of na- 
ture is a continual concert for his praise. The lilies put on 
robes of beauty surpassing those of his favorite Kings. 
The tribes of civilized or savage men, with the pomp of ar 
mies and the gloom or glory of war, are all for the King of 
Kings and the Lord of Lords. 

The Creator sends forth stars, as from the hand of the 
sower. 

The suns are only petty gems sparkling to adorn the robe 
of that perpetual night which shrouds the universe. It is 
then a small thing that the Lord of Hosts should claim 
the silver and the gold of the earth. 

In his hands, are the deep places of the earth, and the 
strength of the hills. The sea is his, and his hands found 
the dry land. If there is on the earth any greatness, power, 
glory, victory, or majesty, it belongs to that Lord whose is 
the kingdom, and who is head over all. 

If a man does business for such a God will he fail of his 
reward? 

This Almighty takes note of alms giving and makes such 
a return as seems to Him most fit. Alms come up as a 
memorial before God. His word is established. The liberal 
deviseth liberal things and by liberal things shall he stand. 
He that despiseth the gains of oppression, that shaketh his 
hands from holding bribes shall dwell on high; his place of 



190 BRING IN THE TITHES. 

defense shall "be the munitions of the rocks ; bread shall be 
given him; his waters shall be sure. 

The Jews have a proverb that alms are the salt of riches. 
The Germans have a proverb that charity gives itself rich. 
Solomon has a proverb with God's seal on it, — There is that 
scattereth and yet increaseth ; there is that maketh himself 
poor yet hath great riches. 

And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry and satisfy 
the afflicted soul, then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and 
thy darkness be as noonday. 

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouses that there may 
be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith the 
Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, 
and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room 
enough to see it. 

Give and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, 
pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall 
men give unto your bosom. For with what measure ye 
mete withal, it shall be measured to you again. 

God is able to make all grace abound toward you : that 
ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound 
to every good work. 

God swore by himself to Abraham saying, Surely blessing 
I will bless the, and multiplying I will multiply thee. An 
oath for confirmation is an end to all strife. The bargain 
God has sworn unto cannot fail. 

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord 
and that which he hath given will he pay him again. 

Blessed is he that considereth the poor, the Lord will de- 



HOW TO FILL BARNS. 191 

liver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him 
and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth ; 
and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. 
The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing : 
thou wilt make all his bed in sickness. 

He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor: his right- 
eousness endureth forever ; his horn shall be exalted. 

He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed. The lib- 
eral soul shall be made fat and he that watereth shall be 
watered also himself. 

Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first 
fruits of all thine increase ; so shall thy barns be filled witli 
plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. 

Barns are not filled by trying too hard to fill them. Ii 
the promises of the Bible are given to that mercy shown in 
the common bounties of giving food and raiment, how much 
larger blessing will God give those who care for souls ? 



In the gift to Christ there are no cold calculations of the 
chances of God's reward. No man hateth his own flesh. If 
he becomes one with Christ, as the branch is one with the 
vine, there can be no stopping to figure up the results when 
Christ's cause wants money. Yet the reward is none the 
less sure. God's rule is to reward the giving of a cup of 
cold water. Even when his disciples distribute a handful 
of bread and fish to the hungry multitude, God multiplies 



192 THE BRIDE POVERTY. 

the bounty. He may not multiply it before they begin to 
distribute the little which they already have. 

The fact that God does not always make his payments in 
large amounts of cash to those who give. Charities does not 
invalidate the principle. Some men may seemingly give 
largely who are in fact stingy ; — having large estates to 
which their charities bear no liberal proportion. We can 
not urge that God should largely and immediately repay 
them in every case ; men may give from their poverty, yet 
from a wrong motive, — or, if given wisely, God may choose 
to test them by further poverty — and give them a greater 
reward in heaven. But the bride Poverty does not come 
dowerless. A wealthy heart may be mirthful as Crates with 
his wallet and threadbare cloak living in perpetual holiday. 
Enough is a feast. A larger wealth may only occasion 
storms and wrecks to vex us. The flowers of the rich pour 
their fragrance on the common breeze, and their gems pour 
light on common eyes, while common hands have no care of 
them and the rich serve the poor. God's comforts need be 
conveyed through no outward splendor. Content comes di- 
rect ; free as the rain or sunshine. It was said of old that 
poverty is a natural philosophy, an effectual doctrine of tem- 
perance, a self taught virtue ; while wealth is a vice to be 
acquired with great labor and diligence. The poor Curius 
and Fabricius were rich, for the one was master of those who 
had gold, the other, master of his five senses, thought that 
enough. Says Socrates : To want nothing is the privilege 
of the Deity and proper to God alone ; but to stand in need 
of as few things as may be is the privilege of a wise and 
good man and a state of happiness next to that of God him- 



SUBSTANTIAL RICHES. 193 

self, because lie that hath the fewest wants is the most easily 
supplied and next to him that is self sufficient. Themisto- 
cles asserts that a man without riches is better than riches 
without a man. A better spirit tells us that it is better to 
be a poor man and a rich Christian than a rich man and a 
poor Christian. It was a choice prayer of ancient wisdom : 
Give me neither poverty nor riches. For as riches bring 
temptation, so poverty may be full of sin. But poverty is 
no snare or evil thing if rich faith makes the poor heirs of 
Christ's kingdom and at last comforts them in the bosom of 
wealthy Abraham. 

The charities which build up religion make property 
more secure and increase material wealth. Those who hon- 
or God with their substance, God honors. Baxter educated 
many poor young men, bestowing favor on the good and evil 
alike so as to save both, and yet says that all that he laid 
up for his old age somehow came to him in the years of his 
largest charities and since he had less opportunity of giving, 
he had less increase. The merciful obtains mercy and does 
good to his own soul. Seeking to save the goods that make 
up life, life itself is lost ; but self sacrifice heaps glory on 
self, and self denial brings self enjoyment. 

Thus the most substantial riches come. The blessing of 
God makes rich adding no sorrow. That river of God is 
always full of water. In the house of the righteous is much 
treasure, that is, that faith which unlocks God's treasury. 
The God of nature puts a man in league with the stones of 
the field, — an alliance of safety lasting as boundary stones. 
The firm shore of beneficence is unmoved by the storms that 



194 VIGOR. 

shake the sea. The lights of "beneficence point the wearied 
to the only safe track and harbor. The man doing business 
for God may be at eminent leisure in his concern for the 
earthly. He need be careful for nothing, taking no thought, 
that is, no anxious care for the life, the eating, the drinking 
and the wearing. Casting all his care on God, the friend 
of God cannot be poor. Investing all funds where no moth 
nor rust can touch them, he cares for the Kingdom of God, 
and God supplies him the needs of this life. 

An additional reward is found in the vigor of body and 
intellect and in a more healthy spiritual life. The man 
who does business for God curbs his passions and develops 
every muscle for the honorable service. This higher busi- 
ness lifts one from the narrowing calculation of mere bar- 
gaining, and turns him toward the noble work of elevating 
the soul. Profound intellectual wealth is thus suddenly 
opened. 

Blessing the common humanity is blessing one's own flesh. 
A Koman says, Of the two, I had rather not receive benefits 
than not bestow them. A Greek tells us there is more 
pleasure in doing a kindness than in taking one. The Di- 
vinity tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. 
The smile on the face of the recipient of charity is mirrored 
as by some patent art in the giver's soul ; happy is that 
man the gallery of whose soul is full of happy faces ! The 
man is cheered in spirit by his own charities, and the mind 
is turned by charities from a gloomy self consciousness and 
is elevated to an improving companionship. As one view- 
ing the sea at sunrise finds a line of light sent from that 



BENEDICTIONS. 195 

sun to him, so the "benevolent soul finds a track of per- 
petual light between itself and God. 

Andrew Fuller says, that he found no permanent relief 
from melancholy in his early religious life, till his mind 
reached abroad forgetting his own sorrows in the griefs of 
the world. He tells us that for a long time he systemati- 
cally tried to comfort a class of dark and gloomy church 
members ; more and more clouds gathered over them. But 
after the interest in missions arose, he found no noise of 
complaint, but all were zealous for Christ and joyous in 
Christ. 

We look down to our pelf and cannot see the heavens, 
but if we look afar off, as if to find the needy at the ends 
of the earth, we see God's sky close above the hills. We 
are more apt to see heaven by looking off toward distant 
prospects than by casting our eyes downward. Now such 
spiritual gains, or the gain we make in the souls of other 
men are as real gains as any, and are the only ones recog- 
nised in heaven ; if one in debating his business or place of 
business allows no room for this kind of gain, he walks for- 
ever in poverty. 

Again, there is a reward of honor to that man who may 
become a hiding place from the winds, a covert from the 
tempest or if he is as a river of water in a dry place, or if 
he stand as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Is 
there no honor in receiving the blessing of him that was 
ready to perish? We may receive present benedictions from 
the needy ; as the sea sends its waters all over the land, but 
receives them again into its own bosom, joyous under white 



196 COMPOUND INTEREST. 

sails and the treasures of the shore. Or as the inhabitants 
of the valleys bless the gods of the mountains when the 
great ranges protect them from storms, or distant countries 
praise for the streams which flow from the rocky hill sides 
so distant ages and those who dwell low on the earth shall 
render thanks for those lofty charities hoven up by these 
our first missionary labors. 

It is well to remember that the investments of charity 
are enduring and doubling. Large sums gain their usury 
so long as the world stands. There are miracles of com- 
pound interest. The Bible given to day gains a soul, who 
in twenty years gains at least one, and he gains one in the 
next generation, and the giver of the first charity becomes 
exceeding rich as the instalments one after another reach 
him in heaven. Again, there is a reward in the blessing 
which comes on children's children. As the hoarding of 
the jmiser is a curse to his generation following, so the 
godly self denial of the father makes the sons rich, and his 
children after him seek to please the poor. 



If God is able to give, promises to give, and does give re- 
ward in property, in a peaceful business, a quiet and wealthy 
mind and in honorable blessing from men, those doing busi- 
ness for God, living under the Constitution of the Church 
ought to have a practical faith in God's method of securing 
the bread which perisheth. 

Do any take God's name and come to us begging? We 



heaven's gate. 197 

ask Can they repay us ? What is their endorsement ? The 
writing is, — "When the poor and needy seek water and 
there is none and their tongue faiieth for thirst, I the Lord 
will hear them ; I the God of Israel will not forsake them." 
Shall we trust money to such ? Will they return with food 
and clothing for the hour of our need ? 

He that doeth good turns is mindful of that which may 
come hereafter and when he falleth he shall find a stay. 

Giving to the needy then becomes a direct ministry of 
salvation to the giver; thus our charities return to us in 
our time of need. 

Let thy alms go before and keep heaven's gate open for 
thee, or both may come too late. 

How can we secure property in the eternal life ? Can we 
make friends of our unrighteous mammon? If we cannot 
make friends of it, we may by it. The Eather at Hippo and 
great names in England suggest that by right disburse- 
ments of this unholy mammon we may gain the poor as our 
friends, by whose prayers or other influence we may be re- 
ceived to everlasting habitations. If then oar ready gold 
weighs well with the porters of heaven, or may tempt angels 
to camp around us, let us note that the word of Christ is 
not, that you should make a friend of this mammon when ye 
fail, that is, die, but do it now, that when ye fail ye may be 
received. The persons on whom we bestow charities may 
be counted as angels in disguise, who merely wish to record 
our names with God. 

How shall we find favor in the sight of God? God will 
have mercy and not sacrifice. Eather to do good and to 

17* 



198 NOBLE LIGHTS. 

communicate are the sacrifices with which God is well pleas- 
ed. Mercy rejoices, that is, is not only bold but is victori- 
ously shouting against judgment. If one would pay heavy 
ransom to escape from horrid torture to day, shall it be 
deemed too expensive to buy himself off from protracted tor- 
ment by the gift of goods, which, having no saving power 
are still the outward sign of the gift of the soul to Christ ? 

Who shall surely live and not die? He that neither 
hath oppressed any, nor hath withholden the pledge, nor 
hath spoiled by violence; but hath given his bread to the 
hungry and hath covered the naked with a garment and hath 
taken off his hand from the poor. 

They whose gifts shall turn many to righteousness shall 
shine as the stars forever and ever. ''Not as those vulgar 
ordinary stars, that have light enough only to make them 
visible ; but like the more noble lights which are able to 
cast a shadow through the whole creation, even like the sun 
in his full strength." 

If then you will find open reward at the resurrection of 
the just, invite the poor in food and raiment, the maimed 
in body, the halt in intellect, the blind in heart, and feed 
them under the eye of Him who seeth in secret ; thus you 
may exchange your awkward estate for convenient gold 
in that bright country where you will soon travel. 

Atolus of Eheims had for his epitaph: " He exported his 
fortune before him into heaven by his charities ; he has gone 
thither to enjoy it." 

Is every kindly deed a round in a ladder to the skies? 
Do heaven's marching orders lead us up the steps of the 



A DIADEM OF BEAUTY. 199 

houses of the poor ? Then let us patiently work, and wait 
our eternal inheritance, confidently expecting a large for- 
tune. 

The promise is sure. Christ asks no princely young man 
to sell all he has and give to the poor, without saying to 
him in the same connection, "Thou shalt have treasure in 
Heaven." Who will not do it with Christ's security for a 
a seat in Heaven ? Every thing the hand of Charity touch- 
es is turned into gold, and piled up in heaven for an eter- 
nal revenue. 

For ye had compassion on me in my ponds, and took joy- 
fully the spoiling of your goods, knowing yourselves that ye 
have in heaven a better and an enduring substance. 

It is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that 
fadeth not away. In that day shall the Lord of Hosts be 
for a crown of glory and for a diadem of beauty. The first 
moment of Heaven tells of wealth and free giving which 
shame the narrow policy of this world. The man going 
thither finds that the exercise of love is the business of 
Heaven, and that he has learned only the beginning of that 
Unselfish Life which fills up eternity, whose field is the un- 
iverse, and whose leader is God. One giveth freely, up- 
braiding not ; those who follow Him heir all His wealth. 
One hour of Heaven is worth centuries of earth. Will you 
enjoy the earth or Heaven? Now in your age, or in your 
prime, earn, save, hoard and give, give, give to the cause of 
God in saving men. 



THE COMING FIFTY YEABS. 



A few months ago a grand Jubilee was held. The 
friends of missions pointed to "battle fields and victorious 
monuments. We look forward to fiercer fights and the tri- 
umphs of the next Jubilee rising above the scenes of to 
day as those of to day rise above the deeds of fifty years ago. 

"We consider the reason we have to suppose that the mis- 
sionary spirit, during the coming fifty years will increase in 
at least as large a ratio as in the past fifty. 

The church has money enough ; and though now invested 
in the covetous or the luxurions life, it is liable, under 
God's hand, to be turned to nobler use. There has been a 
steady rise in the liberality of the Church. Selfishness, 
compressed in narrower channels is deeper, and more noisy 
than once ; but the quiet stream of beneficence has not only 
deepened but broadened. The work already done is promise 
of the future. 

Again : The purification of the American Church is favora- 
ble. In many quarters the Church is just now purified by 
pecuniary pinching which tends to equalize the wealth, 
bringing the rich to help the poor and leading both to sacri- 
fice for Christ. By the necessities of war men are learning 
self denial, — learning how to pay liberally, and to go into 
self denying service in bloody fields. Thus Christians find 



20 i MUSKET MISSIONARIES. 

out what vigor they must and can use in putting down the 
old, savage rebellion against God. 

Some sections of the Church are now made more thoroughly 
alive to the doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man. Recent 
events have "been a powerful and practical sermon. God is 
"meddling with politics." If a few million heathen are 
soon let loose at our doors, it will doubtless arouse missionary 
zeal. A nation largely composed of the descendants of Be- 
ligious Exiles may learn hardihood to take up the bur- 
densome sentiment that all men are born "free and equal" 
and carry it forward consistently. Ancestral Saxon blood 
in North Germany stood out against Chnistianity longer 
than any other people of Europe. They put the missiona- 
ries to death, persecuted the converts, and received the gos- 
pel only after a whole generation of fighting against it. 
Such blood can now flow for Christ, and Christ's idea, — to 
treat all men as God's children. The multitude of musket 
missionaries prove that the loyal, self denying race has not 
yet died out. 

Add to this, that the Churches have been of late refreshed 
and purified by the revival of the other cardinal idea of our 
religion, namely, the Eatherhood of God. The revivals of 
the past few years mark a new era in the Church, as distinct 
as the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Men in masses 
have learned to say, Our Eather. It is this more than any 
thing else that has prepared the people to vindicate the 
right of a government founded on the idea of the common 
brotherhood. These revivals will lead to active missionary 
efforts. The American Board began in the revivals at 



OPENINGS. 205 

about the beginning of the present century, hut the new 
religious life did not assume the mission form for ten years. 
It takes time to interest a man deeply in missionary work ; 
if converted in most of the paasions of his soul, it may be 
that at first thinking himself guilty of no pecuniary sin his 
purse is not converted till years afterwards. This is the 
reason the late revivals have not yielded more missionary 
money. The seed is just sown, it is not time for the harvest. 

Another reason of hope for the coming fifty years is found 
in the apparent pointing of favorable prophecies to a period 
near at hand, as a time of great quickening in the growth 
of the Kingdom. As an incident of the coming Kingdom, 
God will have power over the treasures of gold and silver, 
and over all the precious things of Egypt. The daughter 
of Tyre shall come with a gift. The rich shall entreat fa- 
vor, till the missionary treasury lays up gold as dust or as 
the stones of the brooks. 

The opening of heathen nations is also favorable, perhaps 
peculiarly so ; though since the beginning of history, nations 
have been ever on the move, and the "peculiar openings" 
have been plenty, and invariably followed by peculiar shut- 
tings, save where a Bible and mission, thrust into the open- 
ing, blocked Satan's game. The wandering adversary has 
favorite haunts whence he watches the more unapproachable 
lands ; when one of his homes lies suddenly open to Chris- 
tian operation, the golden moment well improved may do 
much toward driving him from the earth. Heathendom 
just now lies open, as a land of Promise. Does the Church 
lag in Egypt, eating lentils, sitting round the flesh pots, or 

18 



206 PINCHED. 

making strawless "brick for Mammon ? Does the heathen 
land of promise seem across the desert and full of giant sons 
of Anak? But Jehovah is smiting Egypt's gods; God's 
prophets urge us; the sea opens before us ; the report has 
gone out into far lands that the strange work is to be done. 
Islam has heard it. India has heard it. China is hearing 
it. Let us go up to possess the land, though God for a 
long time leave hostile tribes to train his people to war. 
Little by little, the enemy shall go out, lest the evil beasts 
of passion and pride rise and overwhelm God's chosen. 

.Another reason for hope in the coming years may be 
found in the increasing knowledge of heathen needs. Men, 
benevolently disposed, often do not give because they are 
ignorant of two items, namely, — specific want, and their 
own practical ability to supply it. The press of the next 
fifty years will be more religious than the past ; and to sup- 
ply the demands of the age and to give a fair report of the 
movements of the age will record more fully the movement 
of God's Kingdom among men. Again, if means of travel 
improve during fifty years to come as during the last fifty, it 
will not be difficult for our clergy to spend summer vaca- 
tions on mission ground, or if they have the gift of tongues 
to exchange a Sabbath or two with brothers in China or In- 
dia ! In any event, those who feel "pinched" by parish 
limits, and who are weary with the care of a few souls 
may by a knowledge of heathen needs learn to take lively 
interest in foreign fields, and by planning large charities 
lift their minds from any treadmill life and make them 
more efficient in the daily round. Through the ministry 



THE BARBARIAN BOXER. 207 

the land may be thoroughly infused with the missionary 
spirit. 

Perhaps one of the best hopes for the future is found in 
the good rising from the Debts of Mission Boards. Years 
of gloom are years of prayer. The burden is laid on God. 
It is also laid close to the shoulders of those men who have 
before helped only at arms' length ; giving extra help one 
year, and finding they are unhurt by it, they give again as 
largely. The funds of the A. B. C. F. M. increase, while 
the number of donors decrease ! But the chief advantage is 
that the Churches become acquainted with debts as one 
method of doing their missionary business, — a method fa- 
miliar to business men, and without which little would be 
carried on and that narrowly. A false economy is prodi- 
gality. Our Churches have too much forgotten Cary's ser- 
mon : " Expect great things ; attempt great things." If De - 
mosthenes lived in our day, he would have a grand chance 
to use one of his favorite figurers, that of the "barbarian 
boxer." Tor when Satan gives our missions a heavy blow in 
any quarter we instantly drop a hand to that part, trying 
to protect it; receiving another blow we try to protect that 
quarter and make a great cry for more help ; but the only 
true and scientific method is to look the adversary in the eye, 
and by well directed blows render him powerless. But 
while we look the enemy in the eye we are not always able 
to strike, for the arm fears to borrow a little strength 
of the rest of the body and for fear of the debt carries on a 
feeble attack. Such just views, however, on the subject cf 



20S SPONTANEITY. 

debt are getting abroad that we look for a more business 
like policy in the future. 



Another reason why the next fifty years may be more 
lively in missionary work is that people begin now to see 
some return for their outlay. Missions have been a success. 

Some men delight to contrast the machinery of modern 
missions with the spontaneous efforts of the first three 
Christian centuries. But it is as true now as then that 
" There is no nation, no sort of men, whether Greek or bar- 
barian, no country however rude and unpolished where 
prayers and thanksgivings are not presented to the Father 
and Creator of all things, through the name of the Crucified 
Jesus." The missionaries of the present century have not 
been surpassed since the Apostles. While we admire the 
missionary zeal of the early middle ages, we claim greater zeal 
for a purer Christianity. While we glory in the Protestant 
Eeformation, a great home missionary movement laying 
anew the foundations of the church, and remember with 
grateful pride that it was the reflux influence of that revi- 
val which led to the busy adventures of commerce which 
opened up the great foreign missionary fields, we yet 
claim for our own age a keenness of intellect and devotion 
of heart equal to that of God's noblemen in the sixteenth 
century. Different circumstances may obscure men's fame 
on earth, but the heavens hold their names precious. Nev- 
er has the church been more systematic and thorough in its 
labor of love than now. Benevolence is a means of grace 



KING CORPORATION. 209 

the Church, cannot afford to lose, yet will lose but for system. 
We confess to no sympathy with those who decry organiza- 
tion and praise spontaneity, who yet can show no means of 
rousing that freeness of action. It is God's method to use 
organization, giving every great movement a special spring 
in its beginning, it remains a question whether the labors 
of the first centuries might not have been more abiding 
had they been more thoroughly systemized. As a mat- 
ter of fact, through the greater part of the history of the 
Church, there has been little profitable missionary effort be- 
cause there has been little organization ; since present socie- 
ties came into being, there has been a success unparalelled, 
if we consider the shortness of the experiment. 

Defects are essential to human concerns, but we aver that 
there has been less mismanagement in our benevolent move- 
ments than in any other firms that have done as much busi- 
ness. Creaking and wear and breaks do not hinder men 
from clinging to forms of government and corporate organi- 
zations. Corporation is king notwithstanding his faults. 
The worst mischiefs that have befallen our missionary chan- 
nels have come by lack of confidence and promptness on the 
part of complaining friends ! 

Consider now the success of missions. Fifty years ago the 
United States was hemmed in between a savage border and 
the sea, with little influence on the old world. Kising po- 
litical liberty in Europe had been crushed out. The Mo- 
hammedan power, then in full strength, had only just left off 
its persecutions of Christianity. China was closed. India 
was in the hands of a commercial company. The scanty 

18* 



210 sit down! 

means of communication made the world practically thrice 
as wide as now. The missionary spirit had risen so little 
that we count the Church of that day almost heathenish ; 
much as the Church fifty years hence will count us. A 
young man rose and suggested the propriety of missions ; 
but his venerable teacher said, "Young man, sit down! 
When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it 
without your aid or mine." So now if a young man rise 
and suggest that present operations are puerile for so manly 
a Church he is bidden to sit down. A little more than 
half a century since, the Churches either despised the hea- 
then as pigmies or feared them as monsters. Yet a few in 
the Church having begun cautiously once a month to pray 
for the heathen, courage was roused to send out into the 
great dark a man who for four years had teased the ministry 
to commission him. The effort to set him off caused a search 
for funds and sympathy, and thus came to light so many 
that did not fear Baal that, shortly after the attack on In- 
dia, the South Seas, Africa and China were beseiged by a 
handful of Christian teachers. Sermons fifty years ago 
show the missionary cause reviled as low, visionary, sectari- 
an. In 1814 Chalmers writes: — 

"The fact is undeniable. In this corner of the empire, 
there is an impetuous and overbearing contempt for every 
thing connected with the name of missionary. The cause 
has been outraged by a thousand indecencies." "The tor- 
rent of prejudice runs strongly against it and the very 
name of missionary excites the most nauseous antipathy in 
the hearts of many who, in other departments, approve 



boy's tools. 211 

themselves to be able and candid and reflecting inquirers." 
Thus fifty years hence men will quote that to day men 
admire missions, and let them starve, and that both of the 
above quotations may literally apply to our generation in 
the Jubilee Year if we only insert the word " agent" after 
the word missionary in each of Chalmers' sentences as above. 
We, proud of our fathers, may thank God that America 
was quoted half a century ago as a pattern of liberality. 
To day we may lead the world in charity, but, alas ! shame- 
fully fall behind God's requisition. Though Protestant 
missions count nearly three hundred years, their first cen- 
tury was in the cradle, feeding on the word and incoherently 
crying unto God to give them strength. To creep about 
among the American Indians was their first serious work. 
Within the last hundred and fifty years the missionary 
spirit of America and Europe has diffused itself through 
the medium of nearly three score considerably prominent 
societies. These have worked with boys' tools. They have 
not been trusted with sufficient means for the most manly 
work. They have experimented, perhaps blundered. Have 
they now come to skill and man's estate ? 

No objection can be made to the success of missions on 
the ground that the means are small. One seven cent 
book may save a child ; one leaf of John's gospel may con- 
vert and comfort an Indian Pilgrim. What though a man 
take down his pen, take up his ink, spell it out, and think 
it worthy to be printed and send it all over the country as 
a very witty thing, a very sarcastic thing, that Christians 
will not promote the gospel unless the jingle of every penny 



212 A LITTLE AUTOCRAT. 

they give may be heard in Asia and all oyer the world ! 
This hints of the proudest fact in life. If one give but a 
penny for the salvation of men, the ring of it is heard in 
Asia; the idols hear it. No idol, no king, no autocrat, no 
professor, heathen or infidel seated in his proud place can 
hear that jingling coin without fearing it as a token of the 
coming Kingdom. 

That the truth is not costly is not only a sign of its di- 
vinity, but a sign that it was meant for the masses. The 
ability to grasp it is not measured by the amount of material 
wealth in the hand ; in Greenland, in the South Seas, in 
Africa, children are found with the native power of New 
Englanders. The average of conversions in heathen lands, 
in proportion to the laborers, is greater than in American 
communities. 

The missions have abundantly been a success. It were 
sufficient matter for praise that any attention has been given 
to training to use and beauty the men who have been so long 
treated as the obscure, the tangled, the troublesome under- 
wood of the forest of humanity. If missions have by civili- 
zing influences saved money to governments and commerce, 
surely their stations are to be as much honored as old deci- 
sive battlefields. If one idol is turned into a door step to 
the house of the living God, it is a triumph. If one idola- 
ter be led to cross that threshold, it is a triumph. AVho 
then will complain of failure when we read of fifty thou- 
sand heathen converts within fifty years through the begging 
and bounty of one Missionary Board, and five times that 
number by the labor of all the modern Churches. 



JUST ABOUT ONE TWELFTH. . 213 

Missions thus successful abroad have so conquered preju- 
dice at home that six thousand years after the fall and 
eighteen hundred years after Christ died, a little less than 
three million dollars a year is raised for saving men, though 
it he by hard work and by searching the world through ! 
In the Jubilee Year the friends of the American Board were 
so elated by success, so stimulated to self denial that they 
voted to rise in their giving to such an extent that the 
yearly outlay of the Board should be one twelfth as much as 
American church members spend for tobacco. Is not this 
a success ? How well then may we argue that the Churches 
will soon rise above themselves in view of the good returns 
of their money. 

We may more specifically consider how this success may 
lead us to the hope that the next Jubilee may rise above the 
present as the present above fifty years ago. Nineteen 
twentieths of the conversions under the American Board 
have taken place during about the last twenty five years. 
Nearly one third of the mission Churches have been formed 
within about five years before the Jubilee. The native 
preachers increased more than six fold within about seven 
years of the Jubilee. The additions to the Churches of the 
Mahratta Mission during a late period of four years ex- 
ceeded those of the whole previous period of its existence 
since 1813. In the Madura Mission the conversions of five 
recent years nearly equal those of the first twenty years of 
its labor. The coming fifty years will be a time of rich 
harvest as well as of weary sowing. 

Christ comes as a Prophet, then as Priest, then as King; 



214 PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING. 

first proclaiming the truth, then setting up worship, then 
developing the power of the Church and leading forth to 
complete victory. Now in its first stage the Kingdom may 
march through whole nations so silently that no earthly 
king shall hear it. Divine truth operates on a whole mass, 
while only a mere handful of the most despised men come 
into the second stage and worship, and of them perhaps only 
one or two take the third step and begin to work for the 
King of Kings. The work of missions is rarely apprecia- 
ted by the multitude till they see the Kingdom of Christ in 
its third step making a grand march through some people 
as in the Sandwich Islands. There is complaint all through 
the first and second steps, and men verily believe that noth- 
ing is doing till a native Church is formed, and then the 
charge is that the converts do nothing, as though at the first 
they would become martyr missionaries, though that be the 
highest and last attainment of American Christians. Bnt God 
appreciates the work of missions in its first and second steps, 
and where we count only a handful of rude converts he 
counts a whole nation so pervaded by the Christian ideas, 
working ont like leaven from the stations, that the whole 
people are just ready to begin the worship of God and take 
up Christian service whenever some accident of government, 
or a providence seemingly unconnected with the mission, 
makes an opening for the new kingdom. When the develop- 
ment comes out thus suddenly, we cry, "A nation is born in 
in day!" but God says that for whole generations he has 
been pouring out his nourishing truth and preparing the 
way. 



THIRTEEN YEARS. 215 

The seed of God is sown for ages till the earth is full 
of it; then a sudden shower of the Spirit and the sudden 
shining of God out of heaven quicken the seed, and the 
world in one month is covered with greenness and the bur- 
den of Christ's harvest. Five loaves and two fishes multi- 
ply under the hand of the God of Nature and of miracle 
and of grace. Thus the twelve million Christians may un- 
der God's hand feed the world. Figures "by a most reason- 
able ratio teach a method by which it may be done in thir- 
teen short years. The church is like an iceberg, paiently 
growing by the glacier year by year, and year by year loos- 
ening from the icy stock, but in the twinkling of an eye drops 
off and drifts down the sea sweeping all before it. 

When the sacrifice is prepared the fire of God will de- 
scend, but while it is preparing let men impatiently murmur 
at seeming delays, but the truth will at last be known and 
then the world will give honor to whom honor is due — first 
to God, and then to God's prophets. Those men who at 
home have advocated the mission claims, and been unappre- 
ciated as Socrates in his day, have yet succeeded in estab- 
lishing methods of teaching which the world will never for- 
get, though the world may not yet have accepted them. 
Men, who have been unheard as Pythegoras at home, have 
yet gone into other countries and founded the noblest schools 
of thought. As all the wisdom of Egypt was begun by 
priestly colonies and as the Brahmins by missions conquered 
India and the Buddhist carried a foreign religion through 
central Asia to Japan, so a few scores of men of late, have 
quietly gone to distant continents to lay the foundation of 



216 BLACK MEN. 

systems which shall yet be venerable as the most ancient 
names. 



A great part of missionary success consists in the ope- 
ration of plans whose chief result is future, and which with- 
in fifty years hence will produce greater religious changes 
than have ocurred during the half century past. The stead- 
fast labors in Africa afford great promise for the future. 
The conversion of so large a portion of those specimens of 
one hundred tribes gathered in a single section of the West- 
ern coast, is like securing a Christian fountain from which 
to supply that country so loug shut in as by a hedge of fire. 
Noble queens and conquering kings in the service of Christ 
may rise in that land which was once able to send a million 
men to Judea and which by an army of four millions on 
"the new side of the old world" has exercised an absorbing 
influence in the foremost Eepublic of the world. 

That famous doctrine which long used the sword seems 
now likely to fall quietly before the spiritual blade. Those 
whose life is bound up in obedience to fate, now look at the 
ruins of ancient Turkish cities whose splendor occupied the 
world twenty centuries since, as the symbols of a more 
magnificent decay of superstition ; which promises to come 
so soon that those zealous men who will render aid must do 
it quickly, else the subjects of the Sultan will perish under 
the wreck of the old while no new refuge has been built for 
tern. The scenes of the few coming years in Turkey will 
add a surpassing glory to missionary movements. The 



"ONLY A THOUSAND." 217 

Nestorian church, whose mission zeal was wakeful while 
all Europe slept, is now kindling again with new hopes, and 
from its central position will work like leaven through Asia. 
The most hopeful field for the future years is found in 
the celestial kingdom. " After thirty years of labor there 
remain hut seven missionaries of the American Board in 
China," and the other Boards do not lack in weariness. 
Yet Chinese missions are a success of the most decided char- 
acter. If a warlike nation had by a little more than two 
hundred men, in a little more than fifty years at an insignifi- 
cant cost, conquered the persons of one thousand emperors, 
it would not be thought a failure. Who would say " Only a 
thousand?" Or if they had raised up so many princes it 
would be deemed no waste. Yet in China have been raised 
up, as from the very dust, one thousand of God's kings ; 
forever each shall dwell in a glory that would shame earthly 
monarchs. Do we complain of the cost ? If one soul, worth 
more than the gains of a world, had been saved, it would 
be enough. God has blessed the church so much with salva- 
tion that the worth of one soul is not appreciated. The fre- 
quent blessing is at last complained of because it is no 
larger. The angels joy over one saved. If the heavens are 
moved at the saving of one, shall the earth jeer at the sav- 
ing of "only a thousand" in China? 

The smitten rock China may suddenly fly open. The 
conversions during a late period of twelve months amounted 
to the whole number during the half century previous. 
Three score years ago a sermon before the London Mission- 
ary Society alludes to China thus: "If one hundred years 

19 



218 THE ONLY FIT THEATRE. 

hence Christianity shall have found a lodgement in the city 
of Canton, we shall have reaped an immense prize for the 
conflicts of a century." Now the Bible is translated into 
the language read by one third the inhabitants of the globe. 
Political agitations are making the Bible known as a power, 
and inviting Christians to explain it in half the empire. 
Missionary teaching has done much to shape Chinese politics. 
Fifty thousand Celestials have come to America, and are 
more ready to receive the truth here than at home, — though 
only one Christian out of our millions of church members is 
wholly set apart to labor for their salvation ! The dense 
masses of China opening to the light have character enough, 
dignity, steady purpose, patience equal to achieving some- 
thing honorable for that Kingdom which shall fill the whole 
earth. 

The great christian struggle during the coming fifty years 
will be for the possession of that Asiatic kingdom, which 
as the seat of material wealth, intellectual life and fervency 
of religion has been the desire of earthly kings from Mace- 
don and Eome to Trance and Britain. Napoleon's expres- 
sion was that the only fit theatre for action lay in the East, 
Europe being only provincial. The plains of Christian bat- 
tle now lie in that direction. We are told that God, speak- 
ing to men, chose the style of the Orient ; and that the un- 
enfeebled hordes of the East can benefit the world only 
through the kindling of intellectual lights ; and that the con- 
tinent which produced Confucius, the Indian Books and the 
Mohammedan philosophy, which whatever their demerits, 
have been powers over the greatest multitudes of men, may yet 



THERE IS THE EMPIRE OF GOD. 219 

exercise a vital stimulating force on that Western world to 
which it once gave wisdom. This is to "be the work of mis- 
sions in the coming fifty years, to insert into the life of Asia 
the Oriental Scriptures and the Occidental Testament. We 
are to do this in the hope that a purified protestantism may 
find a home among the strong tribes of central Asia, as 
God trained up the "barbarians of central Europe to he re- 
formers of his Church. The oriental converts, few as the 
army of Gideon, are men of such spirit as may well begin 
the most magnificent conquests. 

While Chistians work, Commerce crowds toward the Pacific. 
All eyes, covetous and christian, turn toward the Peaceful 
Sea. Civilization and Christianity were born on a small 
water, have grown up on larger borders, and may do their 
choicest business on the broader waves by whose further shore 
have dwelt the great masses of our humanity. Whatever may 
prove the fate of the future, the fact is undoubted that in 
our time it is more probable that the Northern Pa- 
cific will bear the palm of the future christian civilization 
than in the pride of Greek or Eoman days that the 
glory of the Mediterranean would be removed to the 
Atlantic. Whatever be the designs of God, it is the business 
of God's sons to work in the direction of the masses. "Where 
the people are, there is the empire of God. 

Any labor on Japan, the Great Britain of the East, or by 
the Amoor, and with parts of China, is peculiarly the busi- 
ness of American Christians The sea does not separate ; 
it brings nations together. Sailors or travelers are like the 
the currents of the sea, modifying the atmosphere all along 



220 PECULIARLY CALIFORNIAN. 

the coasts near which the streams flow. The roar of the 
sea is only a symbol of the roar of commerce, which in its 
turn is a type of the incoming of the Divine Kingdom. It 
will not be the obstinacy of Asiatic idolaters, but the obsti- 
nacy of American Christians, if the Spiritual Kingdom is 
not speedily forwarded in the east. 

It is peculiarly American to speak of the commercial glories 
likely to gather to us in opening up eastern empires. It is 
peculiarly Californian to suggest that a great part of the 
gains will pay toll at the Golden Gate. It may be a thank- 
less task to speak of any special charity, but those whose 
minds are set on Asiatic conquests are obliged to take one 
step at a time; and an important, essential step is to get a 
most solid christian footing in our own Pacific empire. 
Any amount of prayer and property devoted just now to 
this, will bring forth fruit a hundred fold. Attention to 
the minute is attention to the magnificent. 

If the Anglo Saxon race is now fairly established on both 
sides of the Pacific, as long since on the Atlantic, we may 
expect that the future energy of the great Island Continent 
of the Southern Pacific, and the British and American set- 
tlers on the Northern Pacific will make good use of the 
great trade wind tracks, and at some period build up an en- 
terprising christian life which will surpass that of the At- 
lantic ; at least as soon as the prophecy of science is fulfilled 
and a new coral continent grows up where now are only cor- 
al isles ! In the mean time those that dwell on the line 
marked out by nature as the world's great highway are to 
be men of foresight and commanding power. To ensure, 



THE RIGHTEOUS SEED. 221 

speedily, a powerful religious life, a thoroughly Unselfish 
Life, a thorough going missionary life on our Western coast 
is of incalculable importance in the eyes of those whose eyes 
are open to the possibilities not so much of America as of 
that great Oceanic and Asiatic power which will he devel- 
oped in future ages. 

The righteous seed of God will some day fill the earth ; 
and if the seed of the Serpent is not regenerated, it will be 
crushed out. But even if the basest of the heathen fade 
away bodily before the advancing christian hosts, those 
hosts will not be fit to occupy, unless they have been made 
spiritually strong by a careful training in the Unselfish 
Life. Whatever, then, God's design may be in leaving the 
the heathen world open to conquest, it is now open; and 
those who are ambitious for God will not idle away time in 
the camp, or lag on the march. Whether many of the base 
of the earth are to fail, as the Canaanites, before those ap- 
pointed to inherit the earth ; or whether, as is promised in 
many of the Asiatics, the old races, vigorous in spite of the 
hoary superstitions of thousands of years, shall rise to the 
service of Christ ; in either event the men of Christ are to 
labor for the salvation of the effete races, saving some, lest 
all perish, and are to labor for the salvation of the strong 
races, that they may sooner serve the worthy Christ. 

While then America is striving by prayer and by powder 
to maintain its right to live, and while God seems to grant 
more than was hoped for in sending Emancipation to 
that land which has been so long cramped, while God 
is thus busy, and God's men are busy, there is yet time 

19* 



222 FOLLOW THE TRACK. 

and strength to take just views and advance the humble 
means of advancing Christ's Kingdom, across the continent 
and across the seas. The omnipresent God inspires his 
children with the spirit of his own attributes till they rise 
above themselves, and handle enterprises too vast, too diffi- 
cult, too distant, too numerous and too urgent to be attempt- 
ed by common men. It is then eminently fit, in the times of 
peril, for us to evince our«faith and purpose of final and speedy 
success by looking beyond and planning those charities 
which may tend to bring in the day of the Prince of Peace. 

Let then the grand Congress of Christians in the United 
States of America vote vast charities to follow on the track 
of the Pacific Railway. 

And while God may make all Christians east of the Eocky 
Mountains home missionaries to the blacks by bringing 
blacks to their doors in spite of the barbaric legislation of 
half civilized states, let there be at the same time a spirit 
for holy enterprise which will seek to bless the Chinese in 
California; seek to convert the savage California Christians, 
who now shamefully abuse the Celestials, and seek to build 
up those religious and educational interests which may thor- 
oughly evangelize that coast and train up a vast missionary 
force for an attack on China, and the conquest and chris- 
tian culture of all Eastern Asia. 



There are encouragements enough to labor and there are 
plenty of signs that the glory of the next Jubilee will 



GUILT. 223 

surpass the present as the sights of to day rise above the 
gloom of fifty years ago. 

But, to do the work, those desirous of Christ's honors 
must deny themselves as never before, for sin is yet wide 
spread. Souls are dwarfed in the polar zones ; vice it rank 
in the tropics. Broad continents are crowded with men, 
the heat of whose social life breeds prolific mischiefs. The 
spice islands offer little hindrance to the indulgence of hu- 
man passions. The sea affords rough temptations and 
chances for wrecking souls. The depravity is deep as wide. 
The apostle declares that the light of nature and the law 
within themselves leave the heathen without excuse, be- 
cause when they thus knew God they glorified him not as 
God. The apostle would stop every mouth of complaint 
with the argument that if Christ died for all then all need- 
ed Him. The Incarnation proves heathen sinfulness, and 
the heathen doom. Though rarely they may find the spirit 
of the gospel, while the letter is unknown, and though those 
who are comparatively ignorant are beaten with few stripes, 
we are to judge the masses of them guilty. 

The missionary spirit prevails always in proportion to 
the sense of the guilt of the world, a sense which induces a 
solemn life, and, instead of despair, leads the soul on to ob- 
tain that power of God which is manifest through the 
knowledge of the Word, the knowledge of the Cross, the 
preaching of that Cross, the prayer circle round that Cross. 
Knowing that the heathen are in the bonds of guilt we are 
to act as bound with them. The rule is to be carried 
through, and though the bonds be carnal, or though the 



221 A STONE. 

bonds "be spiritual, the work is to be done and done now. If 
the heathen cannot put off their necessities ,we have no right 
to make gains and spend foolishly and put off our benefi- 
cence. 

For eighteen hundred years the bread of Life has been 
garnered up under christian hands. For eighteen hundred 
years the hungry world has cried for that bread. Shall we 
longer offer them a stone? The stones cry out "shame!" 
We bless our fathers for their transmission of the Gospel. 
Who shall adopt the orphan world? Our Father in heaven 
will make his obedient children teachers to the children of 
disobedience and wrath. God comes to the earth, converts 
a few men, opens the doors of the False Prophet's house, or 
opens the gates of a nation holding one third of the human 
race, and asks his converted men to go in and preach the 
Gospel. Instead of going to preach, they send proxies, and 
then cry out after them "Be cautious," "Eetrench," "Dont 
get into debt," " We have helped you out once or twice, but 
beware of the future." Thus it is to day. The question is 
a practical one. Eetrenchnient, or debt? The rebukes of 
the Churches say, No debt. The small giving of the Church- 
es says, Eetrench. The needs of the heathen say, No re- 
trenchment. Common sense says, No retrenchment. A 
work has been established, occupied at considerable cost : 
to cut it off in order to " save a little during this hard year " 
is bad economy ; for Satan will step into the vacant place, 
fortify it, and it will cost much more to take it again. Pru- 
dence says, Do not Eetrench. Prudence says, Go forward, 
and if the Churches cannot pay this year they will next. 



THE BEST PLAN. 225 

Prudence is not afraid of debts. Prudence dares not retrench 
till the enemies are defeated. A debt may be the salvation 
of missions, as only by a debt Government can save the 
country. An enterprising debt, though it be not cleared up 
till the next Jubilee, may be good economy, if by it the 
work is pressed forward to a glorious issue. It is peculiar- 
ly difficult to raise money now, but let the work go forward, 
and a debt will be our glory. 

In the mean time, and at all times, let an intelligent 
begging be kept before the people. All great blessings 
spring from the masses. The mission spirit rose from the 
people. The people will be faithful to the work if they are 
systematically trained to it. We read that one cent a day 
from the evangelical church members of a single New Eng- 
land state would furnish nearly the amount now raised by 
the American Board. We read that two cents a week from 
the evangelical church members in the United States would 
amount to four million dollars a year, — one third more than 
what the whole world now raises for foreign missions. Let 
the work go before the people. 

The best plan we have seen suggested for missionary col- 
lections is to have individuals, appointed by the church or 
pastor, go through every district of the parish at the be- 
ginning of the year, asking the people how much they will 
pledge per month through the year ; let the people give this 
when they best can, and as much more as they please ; the 
collectors then going round the next year can gather in the 
arrears and get the new subscription. 

Unquestionably it is by some plan that puts the work on 



226 KEEP OUT OF THOSE DOORS. 

every individual conscience in the Church and community 
that the work will be forwarded. A generation that merely 
passes resolutions, and glories in their ancestors, and gets 
rich and indolent does not achieve empire such as is built 
by the interest of every man in the common glory. "When 
the personal desire of each member of Christ rises to that of 
Mills, wishing to " break forth on the heathen like the Irish 
Eebellion forty thousand strong" the Kingdom will march 
forward. It is true that God does not need men's help; it 
is also true that he allows men's help and that he asks men's 
help, that it is honorable business to help, and that it is 
disgraceful not to help, and that the height of disgrace is in 
crying out to missionaries, " Shut those doors," which God 
opened last year, — "Keep out of those doors," which God 
opens this year. 

What saith the preacher? "Is it not an astounding fact, 
when there is so much created in order to be given, and so 
many professed servants new created of God who hold it 
and are bound to give it, — the oath of consecration most 
solemnly upon them, — a world needing it, — the world all 
thrown open to receive it, or the gospel it might send, — its 
millions upon millions brought into vicinage, and we may 
come directly to them and impress them and mould them 
and put them in the way to heaven : and yet it is a fact 
that the Church fails most frequently and decisively in 
meeting the cost ; as though she could not afford to set her 
dollars against the redemption of these souls." 



THE MILLENNIAL CHURCH. 227 



If the dignity of the missionary work appears from a con- 
templation of the past ; if additional glory rise from the 
hopes of the immediate future ; what shall we say of the 
more splendid relations of these first works to the millennial 
Church? 

Every generation thinks itself peculiarly favored of God, 
and in every generation has risen a handful of men who 
believed the day of the Lord's second coming immediately 
at hand, while now and then whole sections of the Church 
have "been persuaded into the same "belief. But as Christ 
refused to come amid the awful darkness of the tenth centu- 
ry, though the Church and the world stood still in their 
business and wearily waited for him, so the signs of his im- 
mediate coming may be^ now delayed till the barbaric habits 
of a boasted century give place to those good works which 
forerun the serenity and peace of God. But, whether the 
thousand years of Christ begin soon or late, it will be a reign 
worth preparing for. The aim of missionary works is not 
alone or chiefly for this generation. It looks forward into 
a future too vast, and seeks for results too vast, to be appre- 
ciated by the puerile children of a day ; Only the Eternal 
and Infinite One can appreciate the ultimate effects of the 
feeble missionary movements of to day. 

The Scripture method is to count a year of time for one 
day of prophecy; thus these "last times," or dispensation, 
may be lengthened out through scores of thousands of years. 

The analogy of nature hints that the God, who spent un- 
numbered ages in perfecting the earth and vegetables and 



223 ONE LEAF LOST. 

brutes, may allow as long a time for developing the spiritual 
creation. 

The Church history suggests that the Church is yet in 
childhood. For twenty centuries the Church was cradled in 
individual families ; for fifteen centuries it was nurtured 
and defended by a single nation, who treated the holy charge 
so shamefully that God has made them outcasts ever since. 
The stunted infant Church then baptised by Christ grew, re- 
ceiving faith from God and flagellations from the world, 
and overcoming the world, for six hundred years ; then for 
nine hundred years the now pampered child declined, hav- 
ing the sickly period incident to infancy ; now for three 
hundred years the regenerating process has gone on ; to day 
the true members of Christ number not far from twelve 
millions ; while more than twelve hundred millions do not 
love Christ, and more than eight hundred millions do not 
know whether there is any Christ. Alas ! for those vain 
men who believe that in at least ten centuries more God 
will drop the curtain and move all men into eternity ! 

It is reasonable rather to believe that there will be three 
hundred and sixty five thousand years of Christ's glorious 
reign on earth, and that the number of souls lost in the first 
seventy sinful centuries will compare with the multitudes 
of the saved, as one leaf lost from a forest, or a few drops 
of spray tossed on a barren shore while the great tide flows 
heavenward. 

What then will the men of the future think of us? 

We read of base lives in the ninth century ; yet that age 
was proud as we. A thousand years or ten thousand years 



"OUR AGE." 229 

hence, curious antiquarians or renowned historians may look 
back and count up the characteristics of the nineteenth 
century. Slavery, a divine institution, civil rebellion 
founded on robbery, first stealing the liberty of four mill- 
ion black men, and then five million white men justify- 
ing petty larcenies of millions of money and munitions of 
war from the Government ; a century characterized by bloody 
wars ; chiefly characterized with all the centuries before it 
as engaged in fearful rebellion against Jehovah. The mass 
of the world idolaters ; the most civilized, nay, claiming to 
be christianized nations in their most holy localities hav- 
ing three quarters of their population never in the house of 
God ; in their two best nations burying one hundred thou- 
sand drunkards every year and keeping vastly more than 
that number above ground. In that century were Christians 
not much wiser than their generation. The year of our Lord 
one thonsand eight hundred and sixty was deemed glorious, 
because twelve million Christians gave twenty five cents each 
that year for the salvation of twelve hundred million men. 
It was called a glorious year because they had five ! mission 
ships in the Pacific. A part of the men of that generation 
held a Missionary Jubilee, thanking God for half a century 
of success and that by painful toiling fifty years they had 
raised eight million dollars and were then in receipt of three 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. But the constit- 
uents virtually blamed the Missionary Board for running 
into an insignificant debt. They talked much of " pru- 
dence " and hinted of retrenchment, cutting off missions 
already begun rather than build less expensive church edi- 

20 



230 WHAT WILL THEY SAY? 

fices and wear less ornament. Yet they thought much of 
their fathers, but used the ancient fame as the degenerate 
Eomans quarried the old public buildings to build from them 
meaner edifices. Indeed the great body of Christians of the 
nineteenth century failed to follow the few noble examples 
of the Unselfish Life then seen. But the mass imitated the 
conduct of the men in the fable, when it was proposed that 
all the world shout together, and all kept silent to hear the 
shout; so these zealous, curious men conspired to tell the 
heathen of Christ, but most kept silent to hear what the 
rest said. Alas ! they were a generation that laughed at 
the Ptolemaic system of astronomy which made all the uni- 
verse circle round the globe, but they more absurdly thought 
that God and the heavens and the bulk of mankind revolved 
round them. This was the boasted nineteenth century; 
to be counted among the "centuries of Satan." How little 
above the ninth century ! 

What shall the future say of us? 

When at last the great masses of humanity, and that 
through the great period of the world's being, serve God, 
we shall then be counted as having dwelt in one of the first 
unbelieving, rebellious ages, and if we are vigorous for 
Christ in these dark days, it will rank us with martyrs and 
those who have come up out of great tribulation. To have 
been a Christian in the first seven thousand years of the 
earth will be an honor forever. The millennial Church will 
be triumphant. We, the militant, have a place of honor 
to do deeds that may never be possible to them. Our re- 
solves, our missionary literature, our deeds of faith should 



Christ's warriors. 231 

be with an eye to that future. But if men will not work 
under the command, the example, the threatenings or 
the promises of a present God, they will not he stimulated 
to work under the eye of the holy generations not born. 
But if any have a mind to the work, the coming fifty years 
are full of promise. At no period of the Church has there 
been so favorable a time for both reaping and sowing. 

While the few go down to the battle, let those who re- 
main feed them and send reinforcements whenever and 
wherever the men on the field may demand. Those who stay 
at home are not fit judges of the necessities of the war. Of 
Christ's warriors none are permitted to stay away from the 
busy camp unless to furnish supplies of provisions and mu- 
nitions and new men. It is not their business to ask ques- 
tions or grumble, but obey. Theirs is not the hardship of 
of the foreign field. Let them then feel hardships at home 
if it be needful to conquest. The coming fifty years de- 
mand an increased giving. It is a favorable time in which 
to train the people to give. The people are able and are 
willing, if the matter be brought before them intelligently, 
faithfully, continuously, by those who have the most in- 
fluence over them, — their own Christian teachers. 



Long before the millennium, the power of covetousness 
will be broken ; the luxurious life, wasting more than the 
miser hoards, will give place to a diligence in business 
which shall be also fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. 



232 ALPINE BLOSSOMS. 

From this winter of the selfish life, there will come a genial 
spring time to the heart of humanity, quickening its fertile 
places to a more luxuriant vegetation, and warming into 
life its Alpine blossoms and its Arctic moss. No nook shall 
be desolate. The barren fig tree shall put forth bud and 
fruit. The exceeding spiritual glory of the future may be 
somewhat gathered if we consider that the large moneys 
now used for fashion and for passion may then be given to 
the uses of Christianity. 

If, at last, the tide of wealth runs for God, and the rills 
for self, and business exchanges have Holiness to the 
Lord, written over them, and the bells of dray horses make 
music for God, then we may hope for that trade, so beauti- 
ful and acceptable to the Deity, by which an old philoso- 
pher would use a travelling agent for the transmission from 
one kingdom to another of philosophic and just ideas of life 
and practice ; and as spices are not left in their native place 
but make a world fragrant, so the same commerce that car- 
ries them shall then bear everywhere the fragrant influences 
of the christian life; and that spirit, which has sailed 
every sea and broken through every simple or splendid gate- 
way to find plunder, shall be followed by the lights of 
Christianity glowing fast in the wake of trade, and, enter- 
ing through the broken fastnesses of national predudice, 
shall kindle anew the fires of God in those hearts that 
have so long burned incense to Buddha and Brahma and 
the Fetich. 

Long after our own decay, the world will be peopled with 
beauty ; and the nations, which have voted all money for 



A GIANT RACE. 233 

war and appetite and corruption and the prince of the pow- 
er of the air, will pour their treasures to the King of Kings. 
The pompous structures of old civilizations may crumble in 
ruins; hut the glory of God's civilization shall endure. 
There is a day coming, in which every man shall cast away 
his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which his own 
hands have made unto him for a sin. In that day the sil- 
ver images of the apostles, now standing beautiful and use- 
less in our churches, will be seized by the divine warrior, 
melted and sent about the world on their ordained mission. 

Then the bright archway of missionary organizations, 
over which have been borne so many divine messages to the 
perishing, may be removed ; as the ancients believed the 
rainbow to be taken away as soon as the messengers of the 
gods had passed over and accomplished their errands. 

Let us, then, use the device of the Macedonian and put 
on the colossal armor that will be worn by the men of the 
future, that they, discovering our remains, may think that 
we too are of giant race. 

20* 



THE ARGUMENT. 



God made the world on the plan of the Unselfish Life, page 3; hut 
the Constitution of Nature was soon violated, 4, and social ruin 
Resulted, 5. 

The mischief which rises from want of the Unselfish Life is an argu- 
ment in favor of a return to the original plan. 



Covetousness appears. Peculiar to no age, 9, or nation, or indi- 
vidual, 10, it has heen a root of evil, 11. Twin demons rise from 
the Still, 11, or the Slave Market, 12. The name Covetousness covers 
ahout every crime in the catalogue, 12. 

Covetousness has a curious Education, 13. The Bihle, 13, the Cat- 
echism, 14, the Sermon, 15 ; the Schooling, — Physiology, Mathemat- 
ics, 15, Philosophy, Logic, Political Economy, 16, History, 17; Po- 
lite Literature, — everything from the Alphahet to the Diploma, 
points to a covetous life. 

The covetous man hegins life with a will to he rich, 19, 20. The 
growth of greed is noiseless, 21, but intense, 22. The covetous man 
becomes fierce, 23, and a robber, 24. He becomes a fool, saying in 
his heart that there is no God, 25. Gold kills him, 26. 



A further evil rising from the want of the Unselfish Life is found 
in the Retributions that fall on the covetous. 

The covetous man is miserable as a beggar, 31. He is a martyr for 
gold, 31. He is pierced with pains, perplexed, crushed, 32. He is a 
slave, and sleepless, and obtains no profit, 33, and troubles his own 



238 THE ARGUMENT. 

house, 34. The gods are angry. Maledictions, 35, and woes, 36, are 
hurled on the helpless rebels, 37 ; whose only cry is " Vanity of vani- 
ties," 38. 

Death appears, 38, 39, bringing ill visions, and will not be bribed, 
40. Fine things are of no use to the dying, 41, 42. When the rich 
are safely numbered among the dead, 42, there is riot over the prop- 
erty, 43. 

The soul of the covetous seeks heaven or a worse place, 41, 45 ; 
leaving a wholesome lesson, 45, 46. 



A further evil rising from the want of an Unselfish Life is seen in 
the Luxurious Life, — the misuse of money, — diverting the mean8 
of the moral elevation of man into inferior channels, 49. In the early 
ages, Babylon, 50, and Rome, 51, were wasteful. 

Moderns have been guilty of wanton magnificence. France does 
little for religious culture, 53. Britain has wealth enough, 53 ; but 
Britons pay the soldier better than the schoolmaster, 55. Old Eng- 
land pays at a small rate when asked to promote spiritual growth, 56. 

In America the spirit of costly adventure is abroad, 56 ; but it is 
in the service of Mammon. Mammon pays more cheerfully for the 
laying of a cables and the spinning of cotton than for saving men, 57. 
Railways are considered a better investment than missions, or beg- 
ging Bible Societies, 57. It is easier to raise millions for a Continent- 
al Railway than to raise thousands' to promote Christian Educa- 
tion, 58. 

One mill per head is paid for raving the myriads of China, 59. Five 
mission ships are boasted of; but slavers sail in fleets, 57. 

Men pay freely to buy votes or " celebrate," but grudgingly to fur- 
nish spiritual freedom, 60. Courts are better paid than city missions; 
Light houses are more plenty than moral lights in dark places, 61. 
Indian presents, or Japanese excursions, or ships of war, and actual 
war do not cost too much; but it is too much to ask money for mis- 



THE ARGUMENT. 239 

sions, 62. It is counted cheaper to burn powder than to support 
spiritual warfare, 63. 

Tobacco, rum, prize fighting, horse racing, theatre going and 
princely balls exhibit low taste, 64-66. 

Furniture, dress and show allow little for the contribution box, 
66-68. Costly domestic animals and "madness about the throat" 
starve, soul and body, many a child of want, 69. 

Scientific and philanthropic adventure, 70, deserve more money 
than they now get, but how much more worthy and more needy are the 
objects of spiritual charity ! A literature of luxury, 71, and works 
of fine Aet, 72, are paid for, while man the best ornament of the 
world is too little appreciated, 73. Travel absorbs that money which 
might create nobler sights and insure more honorable journeying, 
75-78. 

The evils of luxury are chargeable on men of no "regular " church 
standing, 78-80. The evils of luxury demand severe law, 80, 81. If 
then the prodigal is worse than the miser, let his shrine be broken, 82. 



God comes to the Rescue of the race ruined through selfish- 
ness, and will overturn the sins of greed and prodigality. But estab- 
lishing his Church on the foundation of the Unselfish Life, He permits 
the sins of the world to appear in the Church, 85 ; but the Church is 
far above the world, 86, 87, and may receive wholesome discipline from 
the presence of evil, 88. 



We see then a further mischief rising from want of the Unselfish 
Life, in the development of Covetousness in the Chuech. 

Men seek to reverse God's plan, 91. The Old Church, 91, and the 
New, 93, were tempted by gold. The betrayal of Christ by Judas, 
94, and the mediaeval betrayal, 95, were prompted by Covetousness. 

Modern Protestants are too busy to know much of theology or prac- 



240 THE ARGUMENT. 

tical religion, 96, 97. Preaching to such is hardly worth a copper, 
98. The collector is dreaded, then dreamed of, 99. 

Men value the good name of " Christian," 100. Those partially 
sanctified, or unregenerate, enter the Church unconvicted of pecuniary 
sin, 101-103, but act like the seed of the Serpent, 104. 



The Luxurious Life appears in the Church, contributing to the 
mischief caused by want of the Unselfish Life. 

Fine church edifices are built, while man is still in ruin, 109. The 
humble and earnest Christ has been followed by pompous " Vicars," 
110. Brick and mortar block the wheels of the Church, 111. Bad 
taste prevails, 112. Simplicity is needful to strength, 113. 

Private luxury pinches the cause of Christ, 114. God is pleased 
with simplicity on the earth, 115, and points us forward to luxuries 
in heaven, 116. 

All royal men are commanded to build and splendidly adorn the 
Temple of Charity, 117. 



While so much evil rises from want of the Unselfish Life, and 
while the Church, ordained to correct the evil, has greatly fallen into 
the evil way, it is yet the duty of the Church to Discipline its 
membership for sins in misusing property, and by faithful preach- 
ing secure a healthy tone of feeling and action in regard to charity. 

The Bible declares Coveting to be fearful crime, 122, but, before se- 
vere measures are resorted to, there should be a kind and urgent appli- 
cation of the truth, 123. 

No false cry of " Peace " is to be uttered, J 24. An agitation, 125, 
is to be based on the divinely appointed motives, — Reward and Pun- 
ishment, 126. Our relation to God, 127, and the Old Testament 
teachings, 128, set forth these motives. 



THE ARGUMENT. 241 

The mere neglect of charity is cursed as the worst of crimes,129-133. 
The betrayer is doomed, though Christ is glorified, 134. 

A powerful use of the motive of the recompense of reward is 
scriptural, 135, and safe, 137. 

The sensual cannot see the spiritual rewards, 139 : but hope and 
fear, the two great handles of man's will, are to be laid hold of, 141 ; 
and in kindness to others, 142, and in safety to himself, 143, the per- 
suader of men is to thoroughly argue with miser and prodigal. 



Thus through a faithful Church the Unselfish Life. will at last pre- 
vail. The Constitution of the Chuech is thoroughly missionary. 

To deny self, 147, is taught by law, 148, and gospel, 149. ,; Go, 
preach," 149, and abound in charity, 150, — are strictly demanded by 
the gentlest gospel. 

The scripture rule of giving is definite ; it is the Golden Rule, 151. 
The rule is applicable to common life, 152, and to the missionary work, 
whether India, 153, Turkey, 154, or Africa, 155. All the authority 
of God urges this rule on men, 156. To neglect this Unselfish Life is 
the brazen rule of the Devil, 157. 

Christ's doctrine of the brotherhood of man is a germ of missionary 
power, 157, 158. 

" Self" and "own " are terrible words when one owes all to God, 
159. The child of Christ remembers the forgotten, 160. The Unsel- 
fish Life is the only real life, 161 ; and this is a life of power, 162. 



When the ideas that are embraced in the Constitution of the Church 
are applied to practical life, they will forward the Unselfish Life by 
prompting Christians to Do Business fob God. 

The enemy lust will be crucified, 165. A new affection will cleanse 
the soul, 161. A holy covetousness will possess the heart, 167. 



242 THE ARGUMENT. 

"Wealth is no longer an impediment, 168, but of the highest use, 169. 
A man is rich in his very purpose of charity, 169. Doing business 
for God, a man will be honest toward God, 170, lend to the Lord, 171, 
have a broad ambition, 171, do business enough for God to feel it, 
and do it systematically, 172. 

One who does business for God will not fear debts, when they are 
necessary to the success of his business. He considers the policy of 
public debts, and applies the principle to missionary movements, and 
will have success in his work of benevolence whether or not temporary 
debt lies between him and that success, 174-180. 

The one who does business for God will be prepared to " lose with 
God," 180. He will have a practical faith in God, 181. 



The Unselfish Life finds a reward. 

It is a jewel to serve, 187. God is able to repay, 187. God has 
promised to pay, 189. 

God's rewards are not always cash, 192. Vigor, 194, cheerfulness 
and honorable fame, 195, and the reward of compound interest, 196, 
make the unselfish wealthy. 

If the poor come well endorsed, they may open heaven's gate for 
us, 197. The unselfish shall shine as stars, 198, and the Lord shall be 
their crown of glory, 199. 



The coming fifty years are peculiarly favorable to those who 
will promote the Unselfish Life. 

There is money enough, 203 ; the work of purifying the Church is 
advancing, 203 ; favorable prophecies point to these years, 205 ; the 
heathen lands lie open, 205 ; there is an increasing knowledge of hea- 
then needs, 206, and God's business men are learning how to do busi- 
ness, 207. 



THE ARGUMENT. 243 

Missions, so successful in the past, promise to be more successful in 
the immediate future. '• Organization " is a success, 208. That 
missions have triumphed over home prejudice argues well for the fu- 
ture, 210. God's word, now widely proclaimed, will be soon followed 
by God's worship and service, 213 ; then honor will be rendered to 
whom honor is due, 215. 

Africans and Turks, 216, and Celestials, 217, are all aroused. 
Asiatic plains wait the Christian battle, 218, All eyes turn toward 
the Pacific, 219. The world's great highway, 220, is to be peopled 
with men of an Unselfish Life, 221. 

If the guilty are dying, 223, it is not decent to impose upon them, 
224. The children of Christ will personally rise to the rescue, 225. 

Missions are peculiarly glorious in their relations to the millennial 
Church, 227. The Church is still youthful, 228. Our age is barbaric, 
229. Our age may be heroic, 230. 

The Unselfish Life is springing, 232, and the giant race already 
wear their armor, 233. 



WHAT BAXTER SAYS ABOUT IT. 



i have been long, and yet i would i had done. i 
have taught you long, and yet i eear lest you have 
not learned. i have told you what you knew be- 
fore, unless it be because you will not know it, 

and yet have more need to hear it than a thousand 
things that you never knew. i have set you an 
easy lesson hard to be learned. were but your 
senses rational, or were your will but disengaged 
and morally free, the work were done; and that 
would be learnt in an hour, that the church and 
Commonwealth might rejoice in till the sun shall 
be no more. 




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